Scripting the change: selected writings

254 Pages·53.478 MB·English

by  Anuradha Ghandy

About the Editors
Scripting the Change
Selected Writings of Anuradha Ghandy
Shoma Sen teaches English at Nagpur University and is active in the
W()men/S mOvement.
About Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Committee With a foreword by
Arundhati Roy
The Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Committec was formed by friends of
Anuradha who knew her and/or had worked witl-r hcr as activists at some
point of their lives. f he sudden death of a dear friend and former com-
rade like Anu shocked many. Anuradha was ar.r activist-thinker, one who
constantly strove to link theory and practice, idcology and action. She Edited by
wrote widely and sfudied the diverse strands of resistance and peoples Anand Teltumbde
movements intensely, while actively participating and i"uii.rg
nrany of them. So, in addition to her contributions in dev",erl"orp, ing and Shoma Sen
gtric{ing grass root level movements, she arso buirt up a significa.,tioay
,f theoretical literature. This has helped those ir.r thc forcfront of revolu- On behalf of
tio.ary struggles to better understand the world arcund them. It was
thcref.re decided to build a Knowredge pratform that wiil host thinkers Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Committee
.,cl writcrs who have contributed to changing this world. So far, the
e.r-,rr-ribtec has hosted three Anuradha Ghandy Memor.ial Lecfures in
Mtr rnbai. The speakers were Samir Amin, ]an Myrdal, Baburam Bhattarai
arrtl Art,clhati Roy. The very first memorial lecture by samir Amin was
[,trl,lishccl i. a booklet form. This is the second publication by the
r'orntrtillr.t'.
A rr u rad h.r Chandy Memorial Committee
( /rr Srrrt.slr lt.jt'shwar, Adv.,7Ol1,4, Garden View, Amritvan Complex, ffi
(,ort,1i,ron (li), Mtrnrbai 400 063
I lrrr,r i I :,tgrrrr tn rl rrr [r,r ir,,,Bmail_cOm
DAANISH
BOOKS
Contents
vii
Preface
© Anuradha Chandy Memorial Committee, 2011 Foreword: " .... But Anuradha was different" xi
Citation is encouraged. Short excerpts may be translated and/or reproduced Remembering Anuradha Chandy:
without prior permission, on the condition that the source is indicated. For Friend, Comrade, Moving Spirit ... xvii
translation and/or reproduction in whole, the Anuradha Chandy Memorial
Committee should be notified in advance.
SECTION 1: CASTE
Responsibility for the contents and for the opinions expressed rests solely with
3
the author. · Introduction
7
Scripting t/1e Clrnnge: Selected Writings ofA nurad/1n Ghandy was first published in Caste Question in India
India in November 2011 The Caste Question Returns 79
First Reprint in February 2012 Movements against Caste in Maharashtra 93
DAANlSH BOOKS When Maharashtra Burned for Four Days 113
C-502, Taj Apartments
Dalit Fury Scorches Maharashtra:
Cazipur, Delhi-110 096
125
Ph.: 011-2223 0812, 2223 5819, 4306 7412 Gruesome Massacre of Dali ts
137
Mahars as Landholders
Jaishanti,
123, Kautilya Nagar
139•
Patna-800 014 SECTION 2: WOMEN
E-mail: [email protected] 141
Introduction
Website: www .daanishbooks.com
Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement 145
ISBN 978-93-81144-10-7 (Hb)
ISBN 978-93-81144-11-4 (Pb) The Revolutionary Women's Movement in India 211
Cover design: Uttam 8 March and the Women's Movement in India 227
International Women's Day: Past and Present 235
Published by Dhruva Narayan for Daanish Books
Printed at M.K. Offset, Delhi. Fascism, Fundamentalism and Patriarchy 239
Vi • SCRIPTING THE CHANGE
Changes in Rape Law: How far will they Help? 253
Cultural Expression of the Adivasi Women
in the Revolutionary Movement 267
In Conversation with Comrade Janaki 273
Working Class Women: Making the Invisible Visible 283
Preface
Women Bidi Workers and the Co-operative Movement:
A Study of the Struggle in the Bhandara District
Bidi Workers' Co-operative 311
SECTION 3: MISCELLANEOUS 329
Introduction 331
A Pyrrhic Victory:
Government Take-Over of Empress Mills 333
Empress Mills: What Misstatements? 347 ~uradha Chandy's writings, whether they be short re
A
lnchampalli-Bhopalapatnam Revisited 351 ports on contemporary social and political issues, or re
Season: Tendupatta; Pimp: The State 363 search papers and booklets on theoretical and ideological
Can Revolution be Prevented by Blocking the Roads to debates, had the quality of sharpness, terseness and dearly de
Kamalapur? 369 fined political stands. They were not only well researched and
Gagging People's Culture 381 placed in their historical context but also showed the depth of. a
writer having a philosophical outlook and ideological commit
People's Struggles in Bastar 387
ment. The dialectical relationship of theory and practice, where
The Bitter Lessons of Khaparkheda 391
one enriches the other, seems to be the cornerstone of her work
Working Class Anger Erupts 399
and life.
Workers' Upsurge against Changes in Labour Laws 407
We present, in this volume, a compilation of the works of
Prices Make the Poor Poorer 417
Anu, as she was fondly known among her friends and comrades.
Rape and Murder - 'Law And Order' of the Day 421
Besides her significant writings on the women's and caste strug
A Time to Remember 425
gles, we have also brought together other pieces that give a sense
Brahmin Sub-Inspector Tramples Dalit Flag 431 of the variety, breadth and sheer volume of her writing d~spite
Small Magazines: being involved in intense field activity. Some have been ret1"1eV~
A Significant Expression of the People's Culture 433 from crumbling, browned newsprint magazines with scrawled
Deaths in Police Custody in Nagpur 4.19 logos and cartoons, like Ad/1ikar Raksha, Ka/nm, T/1i11gi, etc. that
'.n
Cotton Flowf'r ... the Best Flower! ... ? 443 were published and distributed by activist groups the 19~0s
Practical Socialism: Not Socialism but Pure Fascism 451 and 1980s. Others from prestigious and widely read JOurnals !Jke
E.PW and Frontier. Some are from booklets from the women's
Index 457
movement or the papers published by a culturnl organization.
vii
Viii • SCRIPTING THE (HANGE PREFACE • ix
Others have been written by her under a pseudonym as they ap form small women's groups advocating lifestyle changes within
peared in magazines that supported and propagated Maoist the system.
ideology. Anu tried to show through her work and writings that it is, in
But whatever the source may be, each piece is interesting, ar fact, by participating in the revolutionary movement that women
gumentative or constitutes some page from the history of strug try to throw off the shackles of patriarchy and hit at its roots. She
gle, which has perhaps not been recorded elsewhere. was developing theoretical formulations on how 'Women need
Perhaps the most significant contribution of Anu has been in revolution and the revolution needs women!' And just like her
understanding the caste question from a Marxist point of view. counterparts in other countries, she too admitted that patriarchy
Hers has been an honest and pungent analysis of the economic existed within the revolutionary movement - the point was how
basis of caste and how it manifests itself in both the base and su to stay within it and combat it, not leave the movement and grum
perstructure. She was one of the pioneers linking the caste sys ble about it. The simple piece in this volume on poetic aspirations
tem to the existing relations of production. With deep insights of tribal women in Bastar is just such an example to show this.
into Indian history, she showed how the Indian feudal system The collection also includes some of her journalistic writings
was basically caste-linked and the ideology of Indian feudalism of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s written for various activist
was Brahminism. She further elucidated how the Dalit question magazines. If all of her reports and articles of this period could be
and untouchability act as one of the major pillars of the caste collected it would be a historical document of the time when the
system. Finally, as was her nature of being a theoretician-cum student movement, trade union movement and even the civil lib
activist, she brought out how destruction of the caste syst·em is erties movement were vibrant and powerful and so much a part
intrinsic to any anti-feudal struggle and the overall democratiza of people's lives and culture.
tion of society. Anu was both a seasoned activist and brilliant theoretician,
The other issue that has aroused similar debate is the under and will surely be remembered as one of the leading women com
standing of the gender question. A great deal of Anu's writings on munists of India. She is no more today. Her writings, only some of
trends in feminism, women and the trade union movement and which are presented in this volume, w.ill not only serve as a per
women in the Naxalite movement, have helped throw light upon manent reminder of her work but also as the beacon for the com
this issues. Anu pointed out that, by arguing for an autonomous ing generations of the activists striving for liberation of the toiling
women's movement, the socialist feminists were in fact weaken people of the country.
ing the broader movement against capitalism, imperialism, feu
dalism and patriarchy. By placing patriarchy as the main 'enemy'
•
of women, the radical and cultural feminists were de-linking pa
triarchy from the systems of capitalism and feudalism which pro
duced it. By equally emphasizing 'production' and 'reproduction'
as the reasons for gender oppression, feminists were bringing 're
production' into the economic base and negating women's signifi
cant role in production. Most significantly, she points out that the
strategy of bourgeois feminism is not to unite women with the
working class and peasantry and fight the system, but rather to
I
Foreword
" .... But Anuradha was different"
Arundhati Roy
That is what everyone who knew Anuradha Ghandy says.
That is what almost everyone whose life she touched
thinks.
She died in a Mumbai hospital on the morning of 12 April
2008, of malaria. She had probably picked it up in the jungles of
Jharkhand where she had been teaching study classes to a group
of Adivasi women. In this great democracy of ours, Anuradha
Ghandy was what is known as a 'Maoist terrorist,' liable to be ar
rested, or, more likely, shot in a fake' encounter,' like hundreds of
her colleagues have been. When this terrorist got !ugh fever and
went to a hospital to have her blood tested, she left a false name
and a dud phone number with the doctor who was treating her.
So he could not get through to her to tell her that the tests showe~
that she had the po.tentially fatal malaria falciparum. Anuradha's
organs began to fail, one by one. By the time she was admitted to
the hospital on 11 April, it was too late. And so, in tlus entirely
unnecessary way, we lost her.
She was 54 years old when she died, and had spent more than
30 years of her life, most of them underground, as a committed
revolutionary.
xi
FOREWORD • Xiii
Xii • SCRIPTING THE (HANGE
essc:ty in this collection, writing under the pseudonym Avanti,
I never had the good fortune of meeting Anuradha Ghandy,
Anuradha says:
but when I attended the memorial service after she died I could
tell that she was, above all, a woman who was not just greatly As we approach March 8, early in the dawn of this new century
remarkable developments are taking place on the women's front
admired, but one who had been deeply loved. I was a little puz
in India. Deep in the forests and plains of central India, in the
zled at the constant references that people who knew her made to
backward villages of Andhra Pradesh and up in the hills among
her 'sacrifices.' Presumably, by this, they meant that she had sac
the tribals in the state, in the forests and plains of Bihar and
rificed the comfort and security of a middle-class life, for radical
Jharkhand women are getting organized actively to break the
politics. To me, however, Anuradha Ghandy comes across as shackles of feudal patriarchy and make the New Democratic Rev
someone who happily traded in tedium and banality to follow her olution. It is a women's liberation movement of peasant women
dream. She was no saint or missionary. She lived an exhilarating in rural India, a part of the people's war being waged by the op
life that was hard, but fulfilling. pressed peasantry under revolutionary leadership. For the past
few years thousands of women are gathering in hundreds of vil
'.'he ~oung Anuradha, like so many others of her generation,
lages to celebrate 8 March. Women are gathering together to
was msprred by the Naxalite uprising in West Bengal. As a stu
march through the streets of a small town like Narayanpur to op
~ent in Elphinstone College, she was deeply affected by the fam
pose the Miss World beauty contest, they are marching with their
me that stalked rural Maharashtra in the 1970s. It was working
children through the tehsil towns and market villages in back
~ith the victims of desperate hunger that set her thinking and ward Bastar to demand proper schooling for their children. They
pitch-forked her into her journey into militant politics. She be are blocking roads to protest against rape cases, and confronting
gan her working life as a lecturer in Wilson College in Mumbai, the police to demand that the sale of liquor be banned. And hun
but by 1982 she shifted to Nagpur. Over the next few years, she dreds of young women are becoming guerrilla fighters in the
army of the oppressed, throwing off the shackles of their tradi
worked in Nagpur, Chandrapur, Amravati, Jabalpur and
tional life of drudgery. Dressed in fatigues, a red star on their ol
Yavatmal, organizing the poorest of the poor - construction
ive green caps, a rifle on their shoulders, these young women
workers, coal-mine workers - and deepening her understand
brimming with the confidence that the fight against patriarchy is
ing of t~e Dalit movement. In the late 1990s, even though she had integrally linked to the fight against the ruling classes of this
been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she went to Bastar and semi-feudal, semi-colonial India, are equipping themselves with
lived in the Dandakaranya forest with the People's Liberation the military knowledge to take on the third largest army of the
Guerilla Army (PLGA) for three years. Here, she worked to exploiters. This is a social and political awakening among the
strengthen and expand the extraordinary women's organization, poorest of the poor women in rural India. It is a scenario that has
emerged far from the unseeing eyes of the bourgeois media, far
perhaps the biggest feminist organization in the country - the
from the flash and glitter of TV cameras. They are the signs of a •
Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghatan (KAMS) that has more
transformation coming into the Jives of the rural poor as they par
than 90,000 members. The KAMS is probably one of India's best
ticipate in the great struggle for revolution.
kept se~rets. Anuradha always said that the most fulfilling years But this revolutionary women's movement has not emerged
of her hfe were these years that she spent with the People's War overnight, and nor has it emerged spontaneously merely from
(now CPI-Maoist) guerillas in Dandakaranya. When I visited the propaganda. The women's movement has grown with the growth
area almost two years after Anuradha's death, I shared her awe of armed struggle. Contrary to general opinion, the launching of
and excitement about the KAMS and had to re-think some of my armed struggle in the early 1980s by the communist revolutionary
own easy assumptions about women and armed struggle. In an forces in various parts of the country, the militant struggle against
xiv • SCRIPTING THE CHANGE FOREWORD • XV
feudal oppression gave the confidence to peasant women.to par that much more personal. Reading through them you catch
ticipate in struggles in large numbers and then to stand up and glimpses of the mind of someone who could have been_ a serious
fight for their rights. Women who constitute the most oppressed
scholar or academic but was overtaken by her conscience and
among the oppressed, poor peasant and landless peasant women,
found it impossible to sit back and merely theorize about the ter
who have lacked not only an identity and voice but also a name,
rible injustices she saw around her. These writings reveal a person
have become activists for the women's organizations in their vil
who is doing all she can to link theory and practice, action and
lages and guerrilla fighters. Thus with the spread and growth of
the armed struggle the women's mobilization and women's or thought. Having decided to do something real and urgen~ for the
ganization have also grown, leading to the emergence of this revo country she lived in, and the people she lived amongst, m these
lutionary women's movement, one of the strongest and most writings, Anuradha tries to tell us (and herself) why she became a
powerful women's movements in the country today. But it is un Marxist-Leninist and not a liberal activist, or a radical feminist, or
recognized and ignored, a ploy of the ruling classes that will try to
an eco-feminist or an Ambedkarite. To do this, she takes us on a
suppress any news and acknowledgement as long as it can.
basic guided tour of a history of these movements, with quick
thumb-nail analyses of various ideologies, ticking off their advan
Her obvious enthusiasm for the women's movement in tages and drawbacks like a teacher correcting an examination. pa
Dandakaranya did not blind her to the problems that women per with a thick fluorescent marker. The insights and observations
comrades faced within the revolutionary movement. At the time sometimes lapse into easy sloganeering, but often they are pro
of her death, that is what she was working on - how to purge the found and occasionally they're epiphanic - and could only have
Maoist Party of the vestiges of continuing discrimination against come from someone who has a razor sharp political mind and
women and the various shades of patriarchy that stubbornly per knows her subject intimately, from observation and experience,
sisted among those male comrades who called themselves revolu not merely from history and sociology textbooks.
tionary. In the time I spent with the PLGA in Bastar, many com Perhaps Anuradha Ghandy's greatest contribution, in her
rades remembered her with such touching affection. Comrade writing, as well as the politics she practiced, is her work on gend_er
Janaki was the name they knew her by. They had a worn photo and on Dalit issues. She is sharply critical of the orthodox Marxist
graph of her, in fatigues and her huge trademark glasses, stand interpretation of caste ('caste is class') as being somewhat intellec
ing in the forest, beaming, with a rifle slung over her shoulder. tually lazy. She points out that her own party has made mistakes
She's gone now - Anu, Avanti, Janak.i. And she's left her com in the past in not being able to understand the caste issue properly.
rades with a sense of loss they may never get over. She has left be She critiques the Dalit movement for turning into an identity strug
hind this sheaf of paper, these writings, notes and essays. And I gle, reformist not revolutionary, futile in its search for justice with-
have been given the task of introducing them to a wider audience. in an intrinsically unjust social system. She believes that without •
It has been hard to work out how to read these writings. dismantling patriarchy and the caste-system, brick, by painful
Clearly, they were not written with a view to be published as a brick, there can be no New Democratic Revolution.
collection. At first reading they could seem somewhat basic, often In her writings on caste and gender, Anuradha Ghandy shows
repetitive, a little didactic. But a second and third reading made us a mind and an attitude that is unafraid of nuance, unafraid of
me see them differently. I see them now as Anuradha's notes to engaging with dogma, unafraid of telling it like it is - to her
herself. Their sketchy, uneven quality, the fact that some of her comrades as well as to the system that she fought against all her
assertions explode off the page like hand-grenades, makes them life. What a woman she was.
Remembering Anuradha Ghandy
Friend, Comrade, Moving Spirit. ..
l remain a song dedicated
to the revolution
This thirst will end
only with my life
- Cherabandaraju
On the morning of 12 April 2008, Anuradha Chandy
breathed her last. The revolutionary movement in India
and the world and the oppressed masses in general lost a
dynamic, dedicated and unwavering fighter and teacher at the
relatively young age of 54.
Com. Anuradha had just returned after spending a week in
Jharkhand taking classes for leading women activists from
Jharkhand, mostly from tribal backgrounds, on the question of
women's oppression. On 6 April, when the blood tests after she a
was struck by high fever did not show any signs of malaria, little
did she or het comrades realize that the fever was caused by falci
parum malaria and that it would prove fatal. Her frail and di
minutive body which had withstood many a battle since a young
age, had already been weakened by systemic sclerosis (an auto
immune disease that had affected her hands and had begun slow-
ly eating into her heart and lungs). On 11 April morning, when
xvii
REMEMBERING ANURADHA GHANDY • xix
xviii • SCRIPTING THE CHANGE
days at Elphinstone College, Bombay in the early 1970s. Those
the diagnosis confirmed faJciparum malaria, she was hospitalized
were the days when urban students were not oblivious to the bit
immediately. By then it was already too late as her weakened or
ter struggles of rural people - that too at a time when rural
gans began giving way. As always, she struggled valiantly. But
Maharashtra was facing one of the worst famines. The young
the end came within 24 hours on 12 April morning. It seemed as
Anuradha along with a group of students threw themselves into
though even in her death, Com. Anuradha stuck to her life-long
famine relief work. She was deeply affected by the horrors of fam
motto of never wasting a minute.
ine that had ravaged the lives of the rural poor and at the same
time inspired by their indomitable spirit of survival.
The early 1970s was also the time when the whole world was
THE EARLY YEARS
in the grip of militant struggles and revolutions. The anti-Vietnam
Anuradha Shanbag, fondly called Anu by everyone who knew
war movement in the U.S., the daring students revolt in Paris, the
her, was born on 28 March 1954, to a Gujarati mother and
heroic struggles that led to the Great Proletarian Cultural
Kannadiga father - both her parents along with all her maternal
Revolution (GPCR) in China among others ... In India, the spark
uncle and aunts were members of the undivided Communist
of Naxalbari which lit the prairie fire of revolution in India in
Party of India. Her parents themselves had got married in the CPI
spired thousands of students to give up their careers and educa
office in Mumbai in the 1940s. Thus Anu grew up in an atmos
tion to leave for the countryside to be with the masses in their
phere of rational and progressive thinking. Her late father Ganesh
daring dream to carve out a new world free from all forms of
Shanbag was a well known lawyer in the Bombay High Court
exploitation.
while her mother Kumud Shanbag at the age of 79 continues to
Com. Anuradha came in contact with the student organiza-
work as a librarian and resource person for a Women's Resource
tion, Progressive Youth Movement (PROYOM), which was in
Centre in Mumbai. Anuradha was the elder of their two children
spired by the Naxalite movement. They started working in the
her brother Sunil Shanbag is the noted theatre and film director'.
slums which helped her come in close contact with the Dalit
The desire to do something for the downtrodden was easily nur
movement where she received her early exposure to the continu
htred in an atmosphere of serious study, intellectual creativity
ing reality of untouchability and caste oppression. It was at the
.:-'1d rational thinking right from her childhood. In this atmos
same time that she began reading voraciously digging deeper into
phere she excelled academically in both school and college.
the warp and weft of Marxism as a touchstone to understand the
Ganesh Shanbag wrote in his memoir 'Kaveri to Ganga' that
basis of the oppressive and exploitative caste system and all the
Anuradha their first born was dedicated by them to the revolu
other ills of society.
tion. Kumud Shanbag remembers the young Anuradha as a bun
She went on to do her M.A. and later M.Phil in Sociology. She
dle.of energy, very purposeful and yet ready to burst into anger at
began teaching as a lecturer, first at Wilson College (Chowpatty) •
seemg any form of injustice to animals or the housemaid. For
and then at the Jhunjhunwalla College (Ghatkopar). Her fervour
Sunil, Anu who was two-and-a half years older, was a close sib
and diligence made her a very popular and effective lecturer and
ling who was responsible for giving him a world view. As he was
a favourite amongst her students. In November 1977 she marriec
in a .boarding school, she would write him long letters explaining
Kobad Ghandy, a fellow comrade.
the importance of every event that was affecting the country.
The post-Emergency period saw Anuradha becoming one of
A brilliant student, Com. Anuradha began as a committed
the leading figures of the civil liberties movement in the country.
cadre of the incipient revolutionary movement right from her