Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice

2 Resisting Domestic Violence and Caste Inequality: All-Women Courts in India

Chapter 2 Resisting Domestic Violence and Caste Inequality All-Women Courts in India Veronica Magar Action India began as a small, informal group consisting of part-time volunteers and became a large and significant feminist establishment in Delhi, India. In this chapter I describe how Action India successfully trained women from the slums to hold the perpetrators of domestic violence accountable through informal women’s courts (mahila panchayat, in Hindi). Through this process, women activists have changed the way low-caste women in Delhi slums deal with male oppression inside their homes and have challenged two adverse conditions in the slums of Delhi—subjugation of women and the oppression of low-caste groups. Moreover, Action India has brought women from different caste groups together on one platform, empowering them as a new social force transcending caste barriers. In a deeply caste-ridden society like India, this is highly significant. Action India India’s contemporary violence against women movement began with two major issues in the late 1970s—rape and dowry. Individual cases were adopted by women’s advocacy groups, then subsequently developed and amplified through the national media to mobilize for legal and social reform .1 The emphasis on law, and thereby on the state, disappointed many organizations, as the laws were rarely enforced. Since the early 1990s India’s feminist NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), like NGOs worldwide, 37 have been shifting their focus from protest and antiestablishment rhetoric to the long-term empowerment of women as a new social force in a human rights framework. This is clear in the case of Action India. Influenced by Black American social justice and freedom struggles during the 1960s in the United States, Action India began as a civil rights movement in 1976. Like other autonomous women’s groups of its kind, Action India’s orientation in the late 1970s was inspired by a core group of volunteer feminists, largely from upper-middle-class homes, who gathered in loosely structured fledgling organizations.2 Their feminist identity was born in the late 1970s, when Action India’s members began to address the needs of women encountering violence in Delhi. In describing how their goals were determined, a founding member elaborates : “We began working on rape and dowry. That’s where we found our true work . . . with the women.” Indeed, since its inception, Action India has applied its understanding of feminism at the grassroots level through women’s experiences with violence, and by evolving ways to help women cope with it. One of Action India’s earliest volunteers reports: We used the theories developed by feminist intellectuals and applied it to the work we do in the bastis (slums). We learned that consciousness raising had to happen on a mass scale, so we started working in the schools, with the girls. We saw a need for a crisis center for abused women who were poor and illiterate, so we developed one—Saheli. We needed a haven where women could be safe, so we founded a shelter—Shakti Shaleni, August 1987. We were all a part of this thinking. We were small, only a few of us, but we managed to do a lot. Saheli (female friend), Action India’s sister organization, represented an effort to put feminist concepts of sisterhood into practice as well as to redefine these concepts by basing them on traditionally accepted structures of friendship among women.3 It was among the first to directly address issues of violence on an individual, case-by-case basis. With a focus on individual women, Saheli volunteers brought in lawyers, counselors, and educators to help their clients struggle through bureaucratic red tape, police harassment, and intrafamilial adversities. Saheli’s “violence against women” program formed a prototype which many NGOs, including Action India, later followed. One of Action India’s founders describes this period: Indira Gandhi was abusing her power. . . . That was really a time of public activism; there was a lot more protesting in the streets. We didn’t have an 38 v e r o n i c a m a g a r office, but went to the bastis (slums) every day. It was the greatest learning experience for me. When does a middle-class woman get the opportunity to see poor people, other than her servants? We saw how people lived and became very close to their issues. This was the beginning of Action India. As funds were secured...