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Literary Review
Sustaining hope
c.s. lakshmi
Ahalya Ranganekar at the protest rally.
ON May 13, women's organisations in Mumbai came together as Women Against Violence in Gujarat and organised a daylong fast as a protest. The protest was organised at Hutatma Chowk, right in the middle of the commercial area so that the public can participate and interact. But it was a low-key protest. No mikes were allowed and the one-day fast was not to be announced and women in the organising groups were on a secret fast. Some of them had visited Ahmedabad and had tales of horror to narrate. There were notices to be distributed to the public, which were not moving as fast as they normally did. Signatures to the prepared note expressing the sense of outrage people felt and protesting against the winding up of relief camps and demanding that special attention be paid to orphans, victims of sexual violence, widows and single mothers while carrying out relief and rehabilitation measures, were not too many. A man from the public had the guts to approach one of the organisers standing with a poster and harangue her about not believing in Shri Ram. A bunch of police persons stood close by watching and noting down details of the posters and other notices. Yes, Neela Bhagwat, the musician who is always there to speak and sing and express her faith in secularism and communal harmony joined the group during the day and broke into a song and, as always, her singing brought tears to a number of eyes.
Such protests have been organised in the past and groups of women have filled this area, stopping the traffic. On many occasions, in the same place, many of us had gathered to scream our guts out, believing that our voices were being heard and convinced that we were not a minority doing what we did. But this time, there was a sense of despondency in the air. Part of it was because of the despair many women gathered there felt because of the situation in Gujarat. Eyewitness accounts, interviews of those who had experienced the carnage and reports had kept pouring in from various quarters and many there had shared all these with one another. Women there had seen, known and felt fear, anger, and sadness. Gathering there was a way of sharing the burden each one bore of the heinous deeds in Gujarat and the immense sorrow. Added to this sense of despair was the unasked question about how long women must keep demanding justice and fairplay. Unlike the Prime Minister who was worried about what face he would take abroad, all of us there had to see our faces reflected in the eyes of others and wonder why our faces never changed in all these years. And will we gather again and again to ensure that we give one another hope? Hope, that change is possible; hope, that we will make it possible. Sitting in the scorching sun, that is the question that came again and again to the mind.
Sitting there, one missed some persons. Gandhian Usha Mehta was no more with us. Frail and small-framed, she could speak in a ringing voice and inspire many. Dr. Krishnabai Nimbkar from Pune had wanted to go on a satyagraha in protest against the kind of politics which played one community against the other. She died a few years ago. Many such women who had participated in the freedom movement and who had made education, protest and rebellion possible for us were not there and it looked like our fights had not quite ended. Even as one's thoughts hovered between despair and hope, two women entered the small shamiana. One was Ahalya Ranganekar and the other, Mrinal Gore. Ahalya Ranganekar is in her seventies and she looked frail and tired. Mrinal Gore had a fractured leg but was there with a walking stick. Ahalya Ranganekar gave an impassioned speech commenting on the Gujarat carnage and spoke with righteous anger about the need for justice. She must have spoken many times in many places in a similar vein. But her eyes still glowed with anger. And her speech came out like a waterfall, without hesitation — questioning, commenting, criticising, chastising and condemning those who made such a situation possible and demanding speedy justice. Many years ago when Mrinal Gore had stood for elections, she had solved the water problem of her constituency and the slogan being shouted then was: Paniwalibai dilli mein; dilliwalibai pani mein (The Bai who gave water, let her go to Delhi and let the Bai in Delhi (referring to Indira Gandhi) go drown in water). Even after all these years she looks the same person and her walking stick lay beside her casually, merely a comment on the years that have passed. The sight of these two determined women still willing to lend their voices to struggles being waged, is what made hope possible that day for some of us. Neela Bhagwat's song, which came later after some of us had left, must have been the song which was caught in many of our throats, which we thought would never be capable of a musical note.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archive for Researches on Women).
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