cool things i've been doing

one of the things cool i've been doing at apne aap was get involved in the “cool men don’t buy sex” campaign -- a call for india to get help stop sex trafficking by signing a petition. the petition will go to the president of india, smt. pratibha devisingh patil, asking her to amend the immoral traffic prevention act and criminalize the purchase of sex similar to what sweden and norway have done. the idea is that if you eliminate the demand, then you will eliminate trafficking. we went out to a student fest at delhi technological university to collect signatures.

a high percentage of the students are men, and it was interesting to see the various responses to our petition. as soon as some heard what we were about, they turned and went the other way. but many of the students signed enthusiastically. here’s a few of the encouraging comments that they included with their signature:

i am very grateful to you that you have raised voice against this issue. and i am totally agreed. thank you.

we have to take strong action against this and it’s very necessary to buildup some rules and regulations.

i appeal to the concerned authorities to protect the women against male violence & to give them freedom so that women can enjoy a fearless life.

women signifies power. we must stand and support women and give them their basic rights. we must respect them and give them their proper place in society because without them our life would be incomplete and the life cycle will not run! save girls!

i think and believe that prostitution must end and respect for women must increase. they are mothers and sisters.

and if you would like to sign the petition, here’s the link:

sign the petition

i also designed a poster for the campaign. it will likely not see the light of day other than here, but i rather liked it. and yes, that’s my rear end!

one day i brought my guitar to the field office and learning center on the outskirts of delhi, where apne aap works with girls and women of the perna caste. in this community of the perna, a high percentage of the families engage in intergenerational prostitution. the females are married off when they’re only fourteen, and soon their husbands or fathers pimp them out to support the family.

girls come to the center to learn sewing and computer and other life skills. here’s one of the posters on the wall:

i had the chance to play my guitar and sing the abc song with two little girls, who did a nice job strumming the strings while i played the notes.

then we were off to another perna community to present an apne aap legal training on domestic violence. it was meant to be a training for the women, but no women showed up, so they rounded up all the little girls instead.

after the training i brought out my guitar again and we sang twinkle twinkle little star. then i tried to teach them the hindi version of “sweet home chicago.” i’ve been working on that song for over a year -- but it turns out some of my hindi lyrics didn’t make any sense! so that song was a big fail. but it was someone’s birthday, so we sang happy birthday instead. yay!

the girls were entranced by the guitar -- wanted to strum it, wanted to know how it works. it's a dream of mine to learn to play the ukulele, and -- when i come back to india full-time with an organization -- start an all survivor-girl ukulele band! :-D

we're gonna need a bigger boat

we’re gonna need a bigger boat. that’s the famous line from the movie jaws -- when roy scheider’s character sees the size of the killer shark circling in the waters. and that’s how i feel the more i learn about the scope of sex trafficking in india.

the last six weeks i’ve been volunteering with apne aap women worldwide (apneaap.org). apne aap means “self help” in hindi. i first learned about the organization in nicholas d. kristoff and sheryl wu dunn’s book, half the sky: turning oppression into opportunity worldwide.

ruchira gupta founded apne aap with the twenty-two women who were the subject of her emmy award winning documentary, the selling of innocents, which exposed the trafficking of women and girls from nepal to india. the twenty-two women were prostitutes in mumbai’s red light district, all victims of trafficking, and during production of the film they found strength in the circle of relationships they built with ruchira and with each other.

after filming completed, the women continued to meet and then began to advocate for themselves with “a vision of a world where no woman can be bought or sold.” this was the beginning of apne aap. this vision has expanded across a number of communities in india, with apne aap self-empowerment groups and community centers that provide safe spaces for the women to gather, learn their rights, get vocational training, and find a way out of prostitution.

my first day at apne aap i got to go to gandhi smriti (the location where mahatma gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and where he was assassinated, now a museum) and sit in with fifteen leaders from american ngos that are part of novo foundation’s initiative, “move to end violence.” we gathered on the lawn and listened to some of india’s foremost female activists speak about their time with gandhi and what he taught them.

gandhi’s granddaughter, tara gandhi bhattacharjee, added a bit of glam to the afternoon with her style, grace, and humor.

and at the end of the day i was asked to write the press release for the event!

two days later i was off to the pink city of jaipur to attend apne aap’s regional survivors conference.

much of the event was in hindi, but here’s the translation of what one of the survivors said:

“in the community many girls are brought in and many are sold out. how do you address this? no one understands that they are playing with the dreams of girls. the clients don’t realize the dreams they are spoiling. the clients don’t realize that this would be a mother, a sister or someone else –- they are just ruining dreams. we want to stop them.”

during the conference, i sat with number of women who are still working in brothels. we exchanged smiles, hellos, and soon got out our cell phones and started taking photos of each other and together. we joked and laughed and had a really nice time.

but back to the bigger boat.

sex trafficking in india happens in so many ways.

my last posts high-lighted the devadasi system, but there are also a number of castes that have a long standing tradition of prostitution. in many families of these castes the women are all prostitutes and their husbands and fathers are their pimps. it’s called intergenerational prostitution, and girls are brought up knowing that they will follow in their grandmother's and mother's footsteps -- and be a prostitute.

then there’s what i call the prince-not-so-charming method of trafficking. it works like this: a young girl is charmed over the course of a few weeks or months by a dashing young man who promises her marriage and a beautiful life together. she runs off with him to begin said beautiful life only to find herself in a strange city, locked up in a brothel, and told she was sold and must work off her sale price with her body. this happens every day in india.

these are just a few of the forms of sex trafficking going on in india, and the problem seems overwhelming, like a really really really big shark. but we stay in the boat until we get a bigger boat. we join other boats. we create awareness, we advocate for change, and we reach out a hand to those who have been pulled under.

faces of change

take a good look at these faces. these are the faces of change.

(photo removed)

these three girls were dedicated in their village temples as devadasis and faced a life of religiously sanctioned sexual violence and ridicule, but now they are preparing themselves to be part of a front-line attack on the devadasi system that would have enslaved them. who better to advocate for the abolishment of the devadasi system than those who have been directly affected by it!

i met the girls when i visited visthar academy of justice and peace studies in bangalore. the campus is not far from my friend ravi’s house, and when i contacted the director, david selvaraj, wanting to learn more about visthar, he graciously invited me to lunch.

visthar is a secular, non-profit organization committed to enabling women, children, and other marginalized sections realize their rights (visthar.org). it’s also a highly regarded academic institution that partners with organizations in india and around the world, training people to work for a just society.

in fact for you minnesotans, visthar partners with gustavus adolphus college and concordia college to facilitate semester-long study-abroad programs in social justice, peace, and development -- so if you know anyone at gustavus or concordia, encourage them to check out this life-changing opportunity!

as i sat with david for a few minutes before lunch, he explained that the term “temple prostitute” widely used for devadasis doesn’t really describe the situation but that “temple slave” was more accurate. he said that the devadasi system is a religiously sanctioned “gross violence against women,” and even though the system has been outlawed in india since 1992, it is “still alive and kicking.”

as coordinator sham khalil later explained, visthar wanted to go beyond the academic study of social transformation and get on the ground, in the villages, and create a place for change. so they envisioned a holistic home for devadasi girls and called it bhandavi, which means friendship.

it was 2003 when they teamed up with a number of ngos in india who had a presence in many villages in karnataka and andra pradesh where the devadasi system is prevalent.

sham himself went to live in one of the 150 targeted villages. they call it capacity building, and instead of trying to change the entire village and its deeply entrenched religious practice, visthar reached out to the maaji devadasis (devadasis who have been put on the shelf) in a leadership development program. this program worked to instill the concepts of human rights to these women and empower them to say no to the system and yes to a better life for their daughters.

sham told me that the villagers didn’t want him there and didn’t like what he was doing. more than once he was chased down the street and told, “we will finish you off!”

in 2005, after much work in the villages, the mothers of a few young devadasis were brave enough and strong enough to let their daughters go to bandhavi. after many tears of parting, the two girls on the left in the photo above came to bandhavi. they were the first! they were just ten years old.

here’s what one of the girls at bandhavi wrote:

My journey to Bandhavi

Where do I begin? My grandmother had already

dedicated me to the goddess Huligamma. I am a

new sacrifice to the Jogithi, or Devadasi system.

My family is waiting with hope and dreams for

me so I can earn for them. The rich people in my

village want a new sacrifice. I had no hope of

being freed from this situation because my father

is sick, my mother is helpless and I have younger

siblings. So I had decided to accept my fate.

At this time the women’s group in my village

spoke to my family about Bandhavi but they did

not want to send me. It was very difficult for me

to leave my family. But I had to decide quickly

or the cunning people in my village would force

my parents to sacrifice me to a wicked practice.

A new life was calling me and I made the

decision. This is an important turning point in

my life. My dreams for the future can come true

because this new life is god’s reward to me.

- Renuka, 14 years old

(http://www.visthar.org/www2/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/BandhaviNewsletter1.pdf)

now bandhavi has seventy girls in the program, which nurtures individual growth, freedom, and dignity and is a “community that lives in love, respect, trust, and friendship.” the girls are creative, joyful, loving, and powerful!

and for the girls who want to build a career helping create the capacity for change in villages like their own, visthar has created a community college social work program. the girls will become trained professionals and be paid a salary to go back to the villages, instill human rights, and empower the women and girls and train them as leaders, and save more girls from the devadasi system.

HURRAH!