 |
|
Mallika Dutt (above), founder and executive director of Breakthrough TV, produced “Mann ke Manjeere," a music video that celebrates Shameen Pathan’s life. Pathan is a woman in Ahmedabad, India who left a life of domestic abuse before finding herself a central figure in Dutt’s video.
|
South Asian Domestic Violence Workers Strategize
New Jersey conference brings some 21 organizations together
By Meeta Malhi
Special to AsianWeek
In saffron and black dungarees, eyes traced with black kohl, and bare feet, classical Indian dancer Ananya Chatterjea wove a story of a woman’s pain. Expressing a woman’s sense of betrayal through pounding feet, while asking for mercy and understanding through a wave of clenching fists rising to the sky, Chatterjea expressed the emotional landscape of a South Asian woman beaten by her husband.
This intensely choreographed piece kicked off “Aarohan — South Asian Women Rise Up Against Violence,” a conference addressing domestic violence in the South Asian community. Aarohan, one of the only events of its kind, ran Sept. 13-15 in East New Brunswick, N.J.
Manavi, a New Jersey-based group addressing violence against South Asian women in all of its forms, organized Aarohan to mobilize groups around the country. Shamita Das Dasgupta, co-founder of Manavi, stated, “We organized this conference because we do not want to work in isolation any more. We want to create a common platform to be connected in a real sense.”
 |
|
“Mann ke Manjeere”
|
Since 1985, 21 South Asian women groups have started in various immigrant pockets within the United States, all responding to a common need: supporting South Asian survivors, mostly women and children, of domestic violence. Dasgupta explained that in the early 1980s, mainstream domestic violence agencies were not equipped to deal with the host of issues that come along with South Asian populations. Some of these specific issues include immigration, language barriers and transnational issues. Consequently, these informal groups of women around the United States have become fully operating advocacy and service agencies supporting South Asian women and children.
Aarohan organizers developed a variety of discussion forums for conference participants to receive and exchange information about the various forms of violence against women and children. For the first plenary session, keynote speaker Kamala Visweswaran, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin, challenged the conference participants to think about the harder issues. Citing the 2001 Gujarat massacre between Muslims and Hindus, Visweswaran asked the group to question the consequences of assigning violence to cultural norms instead of state-sponsored politics, probing the true source of abuse against women.
Visweswaran noted, “These U.S. reports about culturally based violence against women become relevant in examining broader foreign policy issues in the current political climate.”
During the working lunch sessions, conference participants found themselves swaying back and forth to a music video communicating social messages, MTV-style, to stop violence against South Asian women and girls in the home. Founder and executive director of Breakthrough TV, Mallika Dutt produced “Mann ke Manjeere,” which celebrates Shameen Pathan’s life. Pathan is a woman in Ahmedabad, India who left a life of domestic abuse only to find herself as a central figure in Dutt’s music video. The video depicts Pathan driving a truck that carries a load of women singing and celebrating a life free from violence. It was recently nominated for an Asia MTV music award.
 |
|
Shamita Das Dasgupta, co-founder of Manavi.
|
Dutt said, “We are using mass media to turn negative depictions of mainstream media images of women on their heads and using the same medium to produce positive images of women.”
In the later afternoon sessions, conference participants divided up into smaller breakout sessions to discuss the daily legal and service challenges of supporting survivors of violence. Kripa Upadhyay, Program Coordinator for the South Asian Network in Artesia, Calif., discussed the emerging issues of violence against South Asian men and trafficking domestic servants from India to the United States. Regarding trafficking victims, Upadhyay stated, “These women are brought into people’s homes to work as indentured servants. They are not educated, do not know the system in the U.S. and become victims to every type of abuse imaginable.” Participants then went onto discuss how the current political climate was not helping resolve issues pertaining to immigration visas and status for trafficking victims.
These working sessions led to a “final agenda for action” workshop where facilitators asked the question “How will we move forward as a collective group?” The conference participants agreed that the U.S.-based South Asian women’s movement against violence had to expand to include transnational issues such as sex and labor trafficking and state-sponsored violence, while not losing focus on the local cases of abuse in the home.
The group concluded that utilizing current technology such as websites and e-mail groups would serve as a platform for problem-solving and technical training announcements. Most participants called for another conference to pick up where this one left off.
|
