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!

before the brothel...

“you’ve got to know where these girls come from!” said shyam kamble. “to rescue a few girls from the brothels, yes! ok! but what about before they are sold to the brothel in mumbai?! it's in the villages! that’s where the problem is! what is being done to help these girls -- before they ever reach the brothel?!” i’d been wanting to meet with shyam for two and a half years, ever since my stint with freedom firm in 2009. back then shyam was the lead investigator with freedom firm. he has also done extensive investigation work with international justice mission and other ngos involved in the fight against human trafficking. investigating the forced prostitution of minors is not nice work. it’s also dangerous.

as an investigator, shyam went into the red light areas and played the role of a customer. when a young girl was offered to him, he captured photos of the girl on his hidden camera. then he went to the police with the evidence that a minor was being prostituted. if everything went right, and the police were not corrupt and did not tip of the brothel-owner, there would be a raid, the girl would be rescued, and maybe even the brothel keeper arrested and prosecuted.

in his career, shyam has investigated over three thousand brothels and helped rescue more than 1800 girls from the nightmare of the brothel. he has also served as witness in many trials against the brothel keepers and traffickers. but its not enough, because before the brothel is the violence in the village.

“let me tell you something! in my village there are fifty dalit homes. these are the untouchables,” said shyam. “and from these fifty homes, do you know that at one time there were sixty-three girls and women in the sex trade! sixty-three! from fifty homes!”

“how does something like that happen?” i asked him.

“come to my village and see,” he said.

so we went to shyam’s village, khatav, on the border between maharashtra and karnataka. one of the first things he showed me was the hindu temple on the far side of town.

“these priests you see, they are the ones who dedicate the young girls from the dalit part of town,” he said. in the devadasi system, little girls from the untouchable castes are dedicated to the goddess yellamma. when they reach puberty, the girls’ mothers and grandmothers, who are quite often devadasis themselves, are involved in striking a deals with the upper cast men who would become their first patrons. as one person said, the girls who are untouchable in the daytime are not so at night.

the devadasis are forbidden to marry and they often bear children who are not recognized or supported by their fathers. often devadasis move to a larger city and become prostitutes. and when the devadasis are no longer young and attractive, they are left to beg from the upper caste homes in the village.

two such devadasis from shyam’s village came to talk to us when we were there.

i found the contrast between the proud priests and the humbled devadasis striking. the priests enjoy their position of prestige in the community into their dotage, but the devadasis have been abandoned and are ridiculed.

and though the devadasi practice has been outlawed in india, this violence against lower caste girls is an integral part of the hindu belief system in thousands of villages in south india and other parts of the country.

in addition, as shyam explained, any lower caste girl who is a laborer in the fields is vulnerable to the sexual advances and sexual violence of the upper caste man who owns the field.

and with the devadasi system so entrenched in the villages, it is not such a big stretch for a father to sell his girl to the human traffickers that live in the village. after all, many of the men are alcoholics, and they see the money that their neighbor got from the sale of his daughter.

this is how girls from khatav have been abused.

but sixty-three girls out of fifty homes?! and many of them have succumbed to hiv or other diseases. in a village like shyam’s, this brutality against girls has become almost normal part of village life. that has to change.

both shyam and i some how, some way, want to be part of the change.