Kamla Bhasin, the world-famous feminist from India, with a sweet smile, introduces herself as 'The Midnight Generation' - the generation of Indians born around the time of their independence, 'at the stroke of the midnight hour', in 1947. The eldest among five siblings, she grew up around villages in India the experience of which played a big role in her life and career.
A legend to some of us, Kamla Bhasin is at the moment engaged in a war against patriarchal hegemony and exploitation of women by men around the world. Approximately one billion women are subjected to severe sexual, physical, and verbal abuse - one in every three women - across the globe. In Bangladesh, as government statistics tend to show, about four-fifths of the women are abused this way or other.
The 71-year-old Kamla Bhasin is now on a tour to Bangladesh. She came here earlier also - possibly, for the first time, in 1976. This time she conducted a 3-day workshop organised by the Gender, Justice and Diversity (GJD) Department of BRAC. Casting her eyes in and around the room, she frankly expressed her feelings of pleasure as well as pain in Bangladesh's journey towards development with a special critique on the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). She deplores that, there has been, what she says, a gradual erosion of moral and ethical stances of the NGO movement in Bangladesh and India.
According to her, the NGOs in early days used to put almost all their weight on the 'change of position' of the poor through critical question on power relations and power structure. In fact, this was the transformative part of the programmes, particularly for long-term and large-scale impacts. She disapprovingly notes that NGOs of today in the sub-continent do emphasise 'change of condition' - material condition - that aims to improve particular aspects of gender needs (such as microcredit) at the cost of alleviating deep-rooted deprivations of the women. Thus NGOs are found running after foreign funds to carry out welfare-oriented target group operations maintaining status quo in interventions. It is thus possibly no wonder that in a country like Bangladesh where NGOs are many and microcredit programmes run on a massive scale, women abuse here is rampant. By and large, power of love for the poor of NGOs of early days is now apparently replaced by love of power for projects.
Women's emancipation from the clutches of men is hardly to come by without women's access to assets, wealth and property. It will not be from words but wealth. Women of rich segments, in a row with husbands, tend to get material protection from parents but the poor have to send back the daughter to the abusing husband as they cannot support an additional member in the household. Kamla Bashin intones: beti dilmey, beti willmey - daughter in the heart must be the daughter in the will of properties of parents.
This is how a feminist recognises the discrimination against women and, after detecting the discrimination, embarks on actions against such delusive device to deprive women from accessing assets. So, not only a female is a feminist but a man can also turn into a feminist along the line of this reasoning.
In fact, feminism is an 'ideology' as patriarchy is in a male-dominated society. "Patriarchal ideology and attitudes pervade all social institutions (family, religion, law, media, education, etc.) at all levels. To counter this omnipresence feminism has developed varied ideologies and strategies," Kamla Bashin points out.
The main strands of feminism are liberal feminism, radical feminism, Marxist feminism, socialist feminism, Islamic feminism and Gandhian feminism. All these are concerned with and committed to improving the lot of women through scientific understanding of the causes and the consequences. "The term feminism may be foreign, from the French word 'femme', but this transformational process in South Asia in 19th century is an organised and articulated stand against women subordination. Thus feminism was not artificially imposed here, nor was it a foreign ideology", Kamla Bhasin observes.
She continues: 'History' is His story; Women need to write Her story. As history is mainly of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, so it is of men, by men and for men. The 'One Billion Rising' movement across the world, across the races and religion, is a new chapter of women's emancipation from the clutches of men and their supportive institutions. Unfortunately, though, many women work as active agents of patriarchal society as the film 'Pink' shows how a woman police officer was heavily bribed to go against three abused women and take the side of the abuser.
The present author has differences with Kamla Bhasin on some observations and sources of information she used but, undoubtedly, her's was one of the best classes he has attended so far. In the concluding class, the audience sang and shouted slogans against patriarchy; raised forefingers in support of the 'One Billion Rising'.
The writer is a former Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
abdul.bayes@brac.net