Explorations on Feminist Leadership 2022-23 | S1: Episode 3

by admin ● Posted on September 15, 2023September 16, 2023

Episode 3: Accountability and Correcting Harm

The occupations taken by the police-military-market-state nexus do not serve the needs of the most vulnerable, and in fact cause harm in most cases. Jasmine, Sarika and Jyotika come together to talk about accountability and correcting harm in the context of their commitment to anti-capitalist and anti-carceral politics. They explore existing abolitionist and transformative ideologies and also discuss the various structures of oppression that shape the politics around harm, danger and violence based on race, caste, class, religion, militarisation, citizenship and borders.

About the hosts

Jasmine Kaur is a punjabi, queer writer/artist. She likes to surround herself with stories and poetics in any medium, including audio, video, still images and performance. Some of her work has been published by VIBE, …ongoing…, streetcake magazine, and Tilt (by QueerAbad). She’s currently working as a Teaching Fellow at the Philosophy Department in Ashoka University.

Sarika Karnad is a Mental Health Professional and Content Head in an organisation that works towards inclusivity & reliable therapy for all. She believes she learns the most about life by talking to people around her – having meaningful conversations and understanding different experiences. Apart from talking and making an extensive list of things to research, Sarika loves spending her day reading books, baking, learning new skills and petting cats.

Jyotika Tomar is an undergraduate student of History at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi.

Content warning: Various forms of Violence, Sexual Assault, Rape, Death, Oppression, India-Pakistan Partitition, Communal Violence, Victim Blaming, Racism and Racial Oppression, Oppressive Laws, Casteism, Gang Rape Case of Priyanka Reddy, State Sanctioned Violence, Police Murder of George Floyd, Racial Oppression, Custodial Torture

Transcript

Sarika

Hello and welcome to “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by #OneFuture Fellows2022”, a podcast by the 2022 cohort of the One Future Fellows where we discuss, examine, and learn about all things feminist leadership. I am Sarika, and my pronouns are she/her. I am a Psychologist and a strong advocate for mental health.

Jyotika

Hi, my name is Jyotika Tomar. My pronouns are she/her. I am a second year undergraduate student of History at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.

Jasmine

Hi, my name is Jasmine Kaur. My pronouns are she/her and I’m currently working as a teaching fellow at Ashoka University at the Philosophy Department.

Sarika

And today we will be talking about accountability and correcting harm.

Jyotika

So before we begin with the podcast, we would like to tell you about our rationale behind the choice of this theme. We don’t think it can be divorced from our political leanings, which includes among other things, a commitment to anti-capitalist and anti-carceral politics as well as a firm opposition to the various structures of oppression that shapes the politics, that shapes narratives around harm and danger and violence based on race, caste, class, religion, militarization, citizenship and borders.

Jyotika

And we think it’s important to talk about it because the occupations taken by the police, military, market, state, nexus, don’t serve the needs of the most vulnerable, but in fact are enactors and causations of harm themselves in most cases. And we think that we need explanations on these issues from the perspective of feminist leadership to discover how we can build a freer world in opposition to the one that exists now and in furtherance and translation of existing abolitionist thought and transformative principles and traditions of transformative justice, which is things that we want to get into during the course of this podcast.

Jyotika

At this point, I think it’s important to give you some trigger warnings so we’ll be discussing issues and themes of violence, particularly sexual violence and oppression. So we request you to be mindful of that while you’re listening. I think over to you, Jasmine, for us to get started.

Jasmine

Hi, I wanted us to start off with something Ashon Crawley, a teacher, writer and artist, posted about, inevitability of harm on his social media in June 2021. He writes “Harm happens, we harm one another. Many think this saying harm happens and we harm one another to be a value statement and a moral judgement. So instead of thinking about this fact, we pretend we can be innocent, and so too we value innocence as a moral and ethical good. But my garden keeps teaching me my intent to grow more green beans was neither good nor bad, but it appears I have planted too many in too small a space. So though many are blooming, lots of leaves are dying off, and some of the plants too. I have to remove the felled leaves daily. It doesn’t matter that my intent was to grow more food. It actually might even be a noble desire. It certainly was not bad or mean or evil, but the impact is that the growth has still been harmful for some of the plants. What would a claim of innocence ‘I didn’t mean to do it. This isn’t my fault. Maybe I can just keep watering and whooping and wishing’ even mean for the plants. The garden shows me yet again that some concepts, some ideas are deeply insufficient for trying to contend with our world. All that matters is my attempt to repair the harm done. So instead of guilt and shame, which are the underside of and produced by desires for innocence, care, tenderness, handling things, literally putting my hands in the door, pruning, getting messy with my hands. And from this can emerge repair, from this can emerge joy, and from this can be sensed life and love.”

Jasmine

I wanted to share this because this is something that really challenged my perspective on associating guilt and shame with harm, and it really forced me to understand how inevitable harm is and how useless it is to think about notions of innocence instead of notions of repairing the harm that you have done. And I wanted to ask what you both think about this.

Jyotika

So I think this excerpt was a very, very beautiful and advocative way to put a lot of our thoughts around this. And I think I see it as a way in which we approach relationships with each other. And these can be various kinds. These could be, these could look like friendships, these could look like romantic relationships, these could look like parent-child relationships. And even though a lot of them may be based on principles of love and respect, justice and equality, I think there’s a need to also look at, like the excerpt put it, the inevitability of harm of us enacting harm on the other person and us also experiencing harm. And sitting with the fact that it’s a very uncomfortable place to be. But that discomfort is necessary.

Jyotika

And I think it’s also important to look at not just the intention of the actions that we do, the things we say in the context of these relationships, but also look at the consequences of whatever it is that we did, like divorcing it from what we intended to do. And that is where I think we can practice not associating guilt and hurt with it, but looking at the consequences it had for the other person. Especially when things are as contested as the identity or, you know, invasions of privacy or just things that we didn’t mean to be hurtful but did end up being hurtful and grappling with how we deal with that. Sarika, what do you think of this?

Sarika

I think I really like the part where you talked about personal relationships, right? Because I think when we move away from guilt and shame that comes with harm, it also means that we realize that we do hold power in different relationships. For example, in the child-parent sort of relation that there is, punishment is something that’s very, very common and it directly sort of associates like there’s zero tolerance to any sort of violence that happens, right. So it immediately sort of creates a binary. So either wrong, you’re either a perpetrator or you are a victim. And that’s, I mean, is that helpful? There’s strict imposition of punishments, but it also comes with really less exploration, really less reflection. There are no alternatives to it.

Sarika

And that also means that there’s very little accountability that we give to the we hold to the perpetrator themselves, right? So how do we correct harm with alternative behaviors to ignorance? Or like, how do we find an alternative that’s not so much about ignorance, where they just say I’m sorry and how do we move more towards the actions part of it.

Sarika

And I think also adding on to this is that especially as leaders in different sectors, how do we really hold ourselves accountable where even if we do any sort of harm to anybody, even if we have good intentions, how do we prepare for that? When is harm more of an initial response that we work towards and move away from in a way, than something that we sort of just say sorry and move on from, right?

Jasmine

I think we do this by de-linking harm from innocence and guilt, by recognizing that even in our aim to do good, we will end up causing harm and to understand that not as something to feel guilty and ashamed about, but as something to repair. But I am also wondering about how we think of harm at the social level, whatever constructs that exist around it. How do social systems respond to harm? And how we have been socialized in such systems such that we also are and have been enactors and acceptors of this harm, of these systems around harm.

Jasmine

I want to work here with the example of sexual assault. When a woman is raped in India, it is often construed as harm against a family rather than harm against a person. And many of us have been socialized in this ideology. And not to think that a woman who has been raped has faced a fate worse than death. We often accept this narrative even if we do not believe the victim herself. How then do we contribute to the conceptions of harm when we do this? What are some of the other ways in which we do contribute to this conception of harm? How might we be able to mitigate this harm by changing our notions around sexual assault from the ones we have been socialized and to a notion where we sent to the person harmed and how they would like to deal with instead of imposing how we would like them to deal with it? In other words, how have they been chained to hold people accountable in these systems and how do we move out of that training?

Jyotika

Yeah, the very, very important example that you brought up right now, it makes me think of this book on partition narratives, like oral histories of partition survivors written by Urvashi Butalia. So it’s called ‘The Other Side of Silence’. And one of the ideas that she discusses while talking about particularly sexual violence enacted on women during the partition riots was how women’s bodies were used as battlegrounds for contesting groups of like contesting communities and how they were the sites of violence that, you know, these communities used to enact violence against each other, if that makes sense. Which makes us, which puts us in a position where we have to contest with the construction of narratives of harm, of danger and of safety.

Jyotika

And so the one recurring narrative is that of stranger danger. And that is essentially being told, like young women and girls particularly being taught from a very young age that they need to be necessary, like particularly careful of their safety when they leave the home and they go outside because of, you know, this, like this construction of the dangerous stranger which I will get into, which will, which is usually and structurally deployed against particularly men from marginalized communities.

Jyotika

And what also comes at this point is the construction of a binary of the home being a space of safety and comfort and the outside or the public being a space of potential harm and violence. Which is an obfuscation of facts, because statistically, every single year the National Crime Records Bureau data tells us that in over 92-93% cases, in cases of sexual violence against women, it is individuals known to the survivor who are the enactors of harm, who are the perpetrators.

Jyotika

So how do we grapple with this idea of stranger danger, right? And also look at how the entire energy and resources and time of the state and the military have been deployed to sort of give shape and structure to these narratives. And I think that some clarity about that will come when we talk about the disproportionate incarceration of persons from marginalized communities and I’ll take two examples to discuss that.

Jyotika

So in the United States it is the African American population along with of course Hispanic people and other communities which are disproportionately incarcerated and face the brunt of police and custodial violence and systematic targeting. So the African American population though it’s only 13% total population of the country, they make up 40% of the incarcerated population. And when we talk about the Indian context and look at under-trials, it is individuals from Scheduled Caste and Tribe communities and from Muslim and Sikh communities who make up 70% of the under-trial population, right, which is disproportionate to the actual population demographic that they have.

Jyotika

So and a very, very important way of implicating them is through directives of particularly sexual violence and of course these have legal and political basis. So if you look at say for instance legislation like the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, a colonial era legislation, it sort of designated certain communities as habitual offenders and even though in the context of post independent India, that was like the law isn’t enforced anymore, but it’s not enough to say that it’s simply because it’s not enforced anymore, it doesn’t have any consequence because it’s solidified through narratives and the way state and its institutions function.

Jyotika

So the way particularly in individuals from the notified tribes are, you know, targeted by the state now is because of the consequence of what this legislation did, the designation of habitual offenders. And there are organizations that we link in the resources that are working on these issues, which also makes us think about how the level to which violence has been normalized and simply because it is enacted by the state and its institutions, it’s not something that counts for a space of critique or, you know, questioning and it’s just taken as, say, the natural.

Jyotika

So if you look at the sexual violence enacted by the military in places where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is in is deployed, that won’t, you know, that that won’t be questioned to the extent to which other cases of sexual violence will be. And to give you another example of how even though a category of the victim is created, so there is a binary creation of the good victim and the bad victim. And the good victim is something that attracts a lot of public outcry, there is mobilization and so on. And the other kind of victim is a space where that’s not the response that we receive.

Jyotika

And say for instance though Priyanka Reddy gang rape case that happened in Hyderabad in 2019, it was followed by what is referred to as an encounter, right. It’s an extra-judicial killing of the accused. And I remember being in a legal studies class and my teacher who was teaching me legal studies and ideas of political science, tell us very jubilantly that, you know, an encounter happened and they were killed. And I did not have the vocabulary to really pinpoint why I felt uncomfortable about that. But it points to the same thing that I’ve been talking about, about the normalization of violence and how extremely punitive carceral systems of punishment, is the only thing people rally around right in when a case of sexual violence happens. And not only does that structurally not solve anything, but it also takes away the agency of the individuals who have gone through the harm, right? Yeah I think I’ve been going on quite a bit. So if there’s anything that you want to say at this point or come in, please feel free to do that.

Sarika

Thank you so much for that, Jyotika. I think that gives us a lot of context, right, of how this is sort of enacted on a larger ground, like the large perspective of it. And what I also understood is, it is that the power remains with the majority and is and the definition of justice also comes through this majority and is sort of used against the minority a lot more. And I think the main thing that we’re also coming to is that the carceral systems really don’t negate harm caused.

Sarika

And it’s not like the amount of harm caused in society is decreasing. Violence remains, theft remains, everything remains. So it’s not particularly negating the harm. Then we also come to the next question, which is then, how do we transform the society? And right now, what factors in society take us away from accountability and what factors actually lead to justice at the grassroots?

Sarika

I think Jasmine also mentioned sort of giving the victim the power to decide how they’d like justice or how they’d like the harm to be corrected. That would also be something that’s very important here, right? How do we move away then from that punishment and sort of isolating the bad actions of one person to that one person only? Because what we’re also understanding is that the end of the day is something that’s been taught to us from the very beginning, like we talked about personal relationships. Punishment has been a part of our personal relationships in school, in college, probably also, in a parent-child relationship. I think that’s what I’ve also understood from everything that Jyotika talked about. Jasmine, do you want to add to this?

Jasmine

Yes. Thank you again Jyotika for giving us so much context. I also want to add to this through. So something that has really influenced my thought on this is this video that is called “What Should Happen To Abusers If You Do Not Lock Them Up?” And it is by Kimberly Foster on her channel ‘For Harriet’ and features Professor Leigh Goodmark. And it is all about decriminalizing domestic violence and goes into the history of domestic violence and criminalizing it in the US.

Jasmine

But I think a lot of thought also applies elsewhere and in our context also, because they are discussing this question of if we cannot lock the abusers up, what should we do? Because I think we can all agree that domestic abuse is this incredibly important issue against mostly women, but also against people of other genders. And it is heinous to have to be abused for any length of time. And also especially in cases of domestic abuse, the abuse lasts for a long time, even a lifetime. And we also know that not a lot of people even come forward with abuse cases.

Jasmine

So it is a very unaddressed problem. But what really affected me in this conversation was the concept that a lot of times when we criminalize domestic abuse, we are not addressing what is causing the abuse in the first place. We are just saying, ‘Oh, you did this bad thing, now you’re going to going to go to jail forever and the person that you were in this relationship with is maybe partly responsible for that’ and also from the victim we’re asking that ‘This person that you love and have other positive feelings about also is the one you have to put behind bars’. And that is a lot to ask from someone.

Jasmine

And it also talks about how there is correlation between things like unemployment and poverty to domestic abuse. That it is that there is no point if we just put people who are already hurting and people who might have been abused themselves as younger people, to put them behind bars and to hold them further instead of addressing a lot of material realities that are kind of pushing them towards hurting other people around them. And I think trying to focus on this is something that really made a difference in how I think about this.

Jasmine

And also centering victims, because a lot of victims do not exactly want the abuser to go to jail, they want them to stop abusing. That is the main thing. And if not, then maybe to get out of that relationship. But that is also limited and what the understanding of Professor Leigh Goodmark’s has been is that a lot of victims when they have this option that their abusers can be rehabilitated, will choose the rehabilitation over getting this carceral revenge or justice that we have been taught is the only thing we can be getting.

Jasmine

So that is something that has that’s what I think about this and trying to move to restorative justice instead of this very carceral and very punitive justice.

Jyotika

Right. So over here I just want to talk about one thing about to mention on the which is about the reasons abolitionists brought and what and those reasons are foremost and what is an abolitionist and what they think of the issues that we’re talking about. So these are people who call for the complete dismantling of structures such as the prison, the police, the military and so on.

Jyotika

And they locate that political position that they take in a politics based on anti-capitalist and anti-carceral ideas. And they see these structures as violent entities, inherently violent entities, constructed by oppression based on race, caste, class, religion, gender, sexuality, citizenship, militarization, and so on. And I got interested in these ideas during the 2020 protests against police brutality in the aftermath of the institutional murder by the police of George Floyd.

00:25:43 Jyotika

So the prominent abolitionist thinkers are people like Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. And what they say is that these institutions don’t serve the needs of the most vulnerable, but what they do is they deploy their coercive posts against them. And this takes several forms that we’ve discussed. So it looks like systematic targeting, surveillance, custodial torture and violence, creation of the narratives of criminality, of sexual violence or dismissal, of tool of law in the way in which the process takes shape.

Jyotika

And because of these reasons and their analysis of it and the looking of course this is a situation in the American context. So they do a lot of work on how the African American community is targeted by these issues and they say that these institutions will not help us solve crime and must be done away with.

Jyotika

And the alternative they offer is things that look like material and structural changes and that comes from a socialist perspective. So they talk about building communities of care and support, They talk about the state funding, of education, of healthcare, better working conditions. And they say that crime is caused in the absence of all of these things. And that is where we should divert our attention, resources and time instead of, you know, furthering the punitive and carceral response.

Jyotika

And they also talk a lot about restorative and transformative justice, which over to you, Sarika, for introducing us to that.

Sarika

Thank you for that, Jyotika. So I think in terms of restorative justice, right, as a psychologist, I am very used to sort of looking up different researchers and different studies that have been done. And this is something I was honestly really interested in because I really wanted to know how do we implement it right? Because I’m going to say it’s easier said than done when it comes to this because it’s something that has to change at the very grassroots of society.

Sarika

So I’ve actually looked up this study that was done in Florida in 2020, where they implemented restorative justice in a middle school and I think that gave me a really good idea of how it could be something that is put forward and acted on and from there on, right. So it was basically sixth to eighth grade students who were, they sort of changed their model of justice. There were no punishment. If there was any sort of problem that came up, any sort of conflict that came up, they were asked to write letters to each other.

Sarika

And I think Jyotika, what you talked about in terms of community-building in order to get justice, in order to correct harm was something that they used a lot over here. And I think that was something that really changed my mind on how it is something that can be implemented, right?

Sarika

So that’s one. But again, I’m gonna see at the roots of it, restorative justice also comes down to why education is important, why economic stability is important. Having a community around that’s supportive becomes very, very important in this case, because when we see the principles of restorative justice, there’s a lot of what, like a feeling of safety, is something that’s very important. Having stuff that’s accessible is very important. Respect is important and these are things that we also learn when we are children to sort of avoid any bias, to be more neutral and also just having that accessibility of people around who would understand and support you in that space, right, and also hold you accountable more than anything else. I think that is something that is very important.

Jasmine

I think we can wrap this up and we can do that by maybe sharing one thing we have learned in this podcast episode. I can begin. I learned that to reduce people to good and evil is very reductive and harmful. That it does very little to repair the harm caused, if it does anything at all. And rather I think it tends to increase the harm in the world. That our focus has to be step out, stepping out of a preoccupation with being innocent and working on repair and to centering people who have been harmed, rather than punishing people who have done the harm who might have been harmed themselves in the past or even in the present. And to just send over repair and care instead of punishing.

Jyotika

So thank you so much for this very, very reflective conversation. And even though we had some pointers prepared earlier for what we wanted to discuss, all of the pauses and reflections we took in while we were talking is testament to how much we really learned from activity. And I think my take away from this would be how important it is for us to value complexity and nuance when we approach these conversations, be it at the personal level, when we sit in a position where we confront the reality that we might just be, you know, enactors of harm ourselves and it is important to be held accountable for that and sit with that discomfort and also at the public level where we must create spaces where we approach these conversations with a lot more nuance than we do as of now because the position we are right now because it doesn’t approach these conversations in that way. All it does., like you said, Jasmine, is further the kind of violence that we already have prevailing and it’s important for us to have re-imaginations of our responses. So that would be what I took away from this.

Sarika

Thank you so much, Jyotika and Jasmine. I think this was actually a very reflective discussion. And like you said, Jyotika, I’ve also been reflecting a lot more personally on this topic right? And even in the context of feminist leadership. I mean, it’s something that we have to sort of constantly strengthen and work towards in order to be accountable, in order to be kind and empathetic and build that community for people and for each other.

Sarika

It’s almost like a muscle that we have to keep sort of strengthening over time, right? To be kind, to be empathetic. And it’s not something that comes easily. There’s a lot of unlearning that sort of goes into it. But yeah, I think that’s what I’m taking with me. There are still a lot of questions that would need more objective sort of answers, but this is a start and I really like this start. So yeah.

Jyotika

Yeah, you put that really well. It’s a starting point for questions and we don’t have all the answers, but I think that’s the point.

Jasmine

I think so too. I also really like the start, and thank you both for giving such a good reflective conversation, and I think it’s a good place to begin.

Jyotika

To our listeners, thank you so much for joining us and listening in. We really, really appreciate your support. If you like this episode, please follow us on Instagram and Facebook @OneFutureCollective and One Future_India on Twitter and keep an eye out for future episodes of “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by #OneFutureFellows2022”. Please leave in your questions, comments or feedback for us on Anchor or in our dms. We really look forward to hearing your thoughts and until next time, take care of yourself and we hope that we can explore more together. Have a good day.

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End of the transcript

Resources mentioned by the hosts

Ashon Crawley: https://ashoncrawley.com/
The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/49988813
What Should Happen To Abusers If You Do Not Lock Them Up?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmZqyYFudVg
A Case Study of the Implementation of Restorative Justice in a Middle School: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19404476.2020.1733912

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 7

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 6

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 5

Uncuff India Episode 3: Protection and Power: the values of the Indian Police Force

by admin ● Posted on September 14, 2023September 14, 2023

The third episode of the series examines the perceptions regarding the police and its relationship with different individuals and groups on the basis of their social identities. The police system is slowly becoming a weapon of choice for ensuring discipline and the episode dives into the values that guide this. The episode also delves into the messaging around the police force and the multiple ways in which it is expressed and/or experienced.

We are joined by the passionate Neeraj Shetye in this episode. Neeraj is the Partnerships and Communications Manager at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD) at Somerville College, University of Oxford. Prior to OICSD, Neeraj worked at the Oxford Internet Institute as a Research Support Officer. Neeraj consults grassroots collectives in India on program design and outreach.

We are again accepting submissions for the Uncuff India Prize, a creative competition where listeners can submit creative pieces basis the theme of the episode and they stand a chance to win a cash prize of INR 1500. You can find more information about the competition here. What are you waiting for?

Transcript

[Intro]

Sanchi

Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast Uncuff India by One Future Collective. My name is Sanchi and my pronouns are she, her.

Uttanshi

My name is Uttanshi and my pronouns are she and her. We are your hosts today and it’s so good to have you all listening in.

[Intro ends]

Uttanshi

In today’s episode, we will unpack police brutality by situating it in the context of the Indian socio economic and political context. It will also explore whether police brutality and the institution of law enforcement are characterised by any notions of toxic masculinity.

Sanchi

Yes, thank you, Uttanshi. As we know, police brutality has, over the past years, become a weapon of choice for many states to douse or weaken any protests or unrest. Not only has the regular recurrence made it normal but it has also begun to be glorified as a desired medium for ensuring law and order. The perception of the police force as a means of protection is rapidly changing in how only a very select few are protected at the expense of others and it can now then be argued that the police has become a mere symbol of state power.

Uttanshi

To discuss this and to share their insights on the topic with us, we have with us Neeraj. Neeraj is an aspiring public policy researcher with an interest in Indian social policy and its social justice approach. He is currently working as the Research Support Officer at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Most recently, he graduated with an MSc in Politics of Conflict Rights and Justice from the School of Oriental, Asian and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. At SOAS, he was affiliated with the Center on Conflict Rights and Justice as a graduate Research associate and worked as a SOAS Digital Ambassador. At SOAS, he co-curated a three-day conference celebrating 75 years of Indian independence with a progressive critique of the system ‘India at 75 in Review’. He has been involved with grassroots initiatives in India since the COVID-19 pandemic such as Khana Chahiye Foundation, a hunger relief operation in Mumbai, and Eklavya India Foundation in Central India. Thank you so much Neeraj for taking the time out to be able to participate in this podcast and to share your really valuable insights. We’re very excited to hear from you and learn from you over the course of this episode.

Neeraj

Thank you Uttanshi and thank you Sanchi for the introduction and thank you for this opportunity. I’m glad to be connected with One Future Collective today.

Sanchi

Thank you so much, Neeraj. And yes, thanks for joining us today to discuss this extremely pertinent topic and we are really looking forward to hear from you on it. So let me start straight away and ask you- what are your own thoughts about the police. How do you perceive the police system and if this perception has changed over the years?

Neeraj

To be frank, I think I need to clarify my positionality and that’s very important because when one talks about police brutality and one talks about the perception of police, it’s important to know the socioeconomic background of the person who’s speaking because that affects a lot of how people view the police. Over the past few years, I’ve realised that my positionality, of course, comes from a much more privileged space where police as a protector was the only way that we saw the police and that’s how it was described in, say, family drawing room discussions that we had and growing up, I mean, some of my family members were a part of that institution. So that created this perception of police being the protective force for the general population, but over the past few years, I realised that, you know, with my work on the field and with engaging with initiatives on the ground, the perception is different and not everyone looks at the police with the same mindset and that has led me to question the whole idea of whether the police force is merely a protective force. Can it be an oppressive force, and if yes, then what are the ways in which we can sort of reform it? But yeah, my perception has changed over the past years and that is only due to my engagement with activists and grassroots collectives and communities on the ground.

Uttanshi

Thank you so much for that, Neeraj. I feel, you know when I was listening to you speak, even I was thinking about what my perception initially was given my background, my family, and similar to you what I heard my parents describe the police to be and how it has changed. Do you want to share a little bit about- what do you think led to this change in perception for you and what do you think forms the core of the police system? And do you think that the messaging around the police itself is reflective of, or you know, or believes in this core themselves? What are the agents from which this messaging is received about the police, what they do, who they are, what is their role in the society, etc.

Neeraj

Right, so I’ll answer your first question. I inherently see like multiple questions in this one conversation. So, the first question is about perception and how it changed and for me it was during the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 when I started engaging with Khana Chahiye Foundation, which was a hunger relief operation, and we worked on the ground and it was a civil society led initiative which was of course, had to be in tandem with the local government body, the police system and all of that. We reached out to communities in Mumbai specifically and around Mumbai who were absolutely in distress, and these were communities who had lost their only source of livelihood. And for us, COVID-19 was not like, for us who were on the ground, COVID-19 was not just a health emergency; it eventually became like this livelihoods emergency because people often said on the ground that, you know, COVID might not kill us, but hunger will, because there was people didn’t have the basic necessities for themselves. And in this whole situation, you could see people doing the absolute, you know, people resorting to absolutely desperate measures to ensure that their family is supported. They would go out. These were daily wage earners, right, so, they used to go out, try, to like, sometimes beg but also sell stuff on the ground and this was during the lockdown, so of course they were not met with the empathy that they deserved. And police became that force that was tasked with ensuring discipline on the streets and they would often, you know, resort to violence, straight up violence in these communities and their only explanation to us was that, you know, if you don’t instill this kind of discipline with the lathi, people wouldn’t listen to them. So, it was almost like they had infantilized the whole population and that was like the beginning of how I started viewing the police not just as the protective force, but also like this patronizing force that was trying to instill, that was apparently tasked with instilling discipline in the population, which is, which I feel is should not be how the police system functions because that’s not their responsibility to instill this certain idea of discipline into the population. The idea is to ensure that there is law and order and to ensure that you know things can things are moving swiftly and smoothly as possible but resorting to violence for towards the general population is not the way to go and that doesn’t create a very, that doesn’t help the police perception to be very honest. What are the core ideals now? I believe that I don’t know what forms the core ideal, of course, violence might be one of it. Discipline, as in a certain idea of discipline also forms this core idea of the Indian police system. But I know for a fact that empathy doesn’t form, empathy is not a part of those core values. And of course, that doesn’t mean I’m generalizing. There are, of course, I’ve come across police officers who have been quite empathetic towards, you know, but those are as individuals outside, sometimes even outside the police, outside the police uniform they have been empathetic individuals. But in general, I don’t feel empathy is a part of the police system and there are a lot of problems to that. We can discuss it later, but I feel, yeah, that’s the problem. The core values are very rigid. There’s a certain idea of, you know, control that the police resort to and that is, I feel, not so relevant into this society.

Sanchi

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Neeraj and something that you mentioned really stood out to me that how violence may be seen as a core value of the police system, especially in India, but empathy unfortunately is not. And taking from that, you have also already mentioned right in the beginning the importance of looking at one’s own positionality when thinking about what our perception of the police system is. Taking on from that, I would like to ask you how do you think different people perceive or experience the system of police and how different it is for different people, how does it happen or what do you think forms the basis for this difference? And I think the core values that we just spoke of may have a lot to do with it, so I’m curious to know your thoughts on it.

Neeraj

Fundamentally, I feel the way police as a unit is even looked at changes a lot of things and this is rooted in the socioeconomic backgrounds of individuals, communities in spaces like metropolitan spaces like Mumbai and I can speak for Mumbai, but I know a lot of these factors might be the same in other parts of the country, might not be the same- again, there are other factors. There are other social factors such as you know, the religion of an individual, caste identity of an individual, all of these factors do contribute, but in urban spaces like Mumbai also like economic factors, right. Your class background matters and that generally shapes the opinion one has of the police, so you would see like, I mean the bottom strata of the society, the lower class, the working-class communities of the city is often scared of the police in a way. I mean there’s a certain form of fear which is not the same among middle class or upper middle class or upper even the upper class of the society, right, the economically well-off class of the society. They look at police in a very different way and I’ve engaged with all kinds of people in the past few years, and I’ve noticed that the way police exert their power also differs. They know for a fact that working class communities are easy targets, working class communities can be ‘disciplined’, can be used, you know, can be dominated through their perception. So that affects in the way we view the police and also police view themselves, right? So, they are, certainly, like I’ve seen police members, police officers, change their demeanor over time when they move from neighborhood to neighborhood. So, you’ll have, like someone being excessively dominating in a very, you know that masculine kind of a way in a working-class neighborhood but that same person would be extremely quiet, in a very quiet demeanor in like you know, in an upper middle-class neighborhood. And that’s, I mean that also shows how police view themselves, where and how they operate in certain spaces, so I feel socioeconomic factors do contribute to a lot of perceptive reality. I mean, of course middle-class background, I mean people coming from the middle-class often have representation in the police force, so they have a very different way of looking at the police. They look at them as a fellow community member, but that’s not the case for people coming from working-class neighborhoods. A lot of them do not have that kind of representation in the police force so they often look at the police as like a danger more than more than someone that they can look up to for protection. So yeah, that, I mean that’s the way I think socioeconomic factors contribute a lot.

Sanchi

Yeah, I think it is. That highlights very well how the class background of a person might so deeply affect how they view the police and I was wondering if you’d also like to shed some light on how a person’s identity markers such as caste or gender might also play into this perception.

Neeraj

Absolutely. I mean, as I mentioned before, when we work in the working-class neighborhoods of the city, now who is the working class, right? A majority of the working-class neighborhoods that we have worked in came from religious minority backgrounds, especially Muslims and also oppressed caste communities. Now these communities haven’t had that kind of privilege where they could participate in the labor force in the same way that other communities have and a lot of these communities are Dalit Bahujan. Communities who have settled in these certain, you know, ghettoized neighborhoods, and that’s an offensive word in a way, but I mean, social scientists tend to call them these ghettos around the city, and communities here have clustered themselves in and these are specific neighborhoods. Anybody who works on the field knows for a fact that this is the reality on the ground and anyone who disagrees with it clearly hasn’t is clearly intentional or doesn’t know how to look at the society in a general way. So, if you look at Indian society, of course most majority, I mean most metropolitan cities would have these clusters which are deemed to be dangerous, right? And we have noticed that they are given some very offensive slang terms which I do not want to repeat them on today here, but I think people would know what those slangs would be and those are very offensive, often associated with religious minorities, often associated with oppressed caste communities. This idea of criminalization is imposed on these communities and that’s the reality. I mean it’s time for, I feel people coming from privileged backgrounds, social scientists coming from privileged backgrounds to accept that reality, acknowledge that there is something fundamentally wrong with their own communities and start reflecting on those values themselves rather than, you know, preaching some form of ideas onto the already oppressed community. So, I think those ideas matter, those identity markers are exceptionally important when one analyzes police in general, policing forces in general, yeah.

Uttanshi

Thank you so much, Neeraj and while I was listening to you speak, there’s just so much to, I think think back to you know and while you were speaking, I’m thinking where are these ideas of violence, disciplining, protection, etc. coming from, right, and how do they drive or shape the police person’s behavior or their actions? And you know, and I know that this is something you study very, very fondly and you know, you’ve been very interested to understand this phenomenon as well but, you know, tying back to the point about what you said, right, almost clearly that came out of what you were saying was empathy is not a part of the system, maybe as part of an individual person when they are not wearing their uniform, but there is a certain level of violence, a certain duty towards maintaining discipline, a certain level of harshness, if I may say so, that gets associated with the identity of a police person. What do you think drives that identity and what do you think, you know, is there something that drives that identity at all? And if yes, what according to you, is that?

Neeraj

Of course, there is this idea, this very idea of masculinity that drives it, that you know someone has to be more assertive, someone who has to be physically, you know, in a particular shape, of course has to be like this macho person, if I can use that word, and should have that certain idea of confidence and harshness as Uttanshi said. These ideas are stemming out of this idea of masculinity that has been normalized and this masculinity has taken different shapes over time. And in today’s time, we see a different kind of like a Hindu nationalist masculinity that is being portrayed in a particular way, but of course, there are other forms of masculinity as well. But this core idea of masculine identity, which is considered to be, you know, with this particular idea of voice, tone, physical demeanor, all of these things together form this idea of what ideal policemen or ideal protective force should be. And this comes from a larger idea of defense forces, I feel, so police force is just like the localised form of protection service, but then the larger idea of the military and the defense forces that are there and the way they are shaped right, that inherently also contributes to how localized protection forces or localized even vigilante groups see themselves. This whole idea of ‘hamare Jawan’ (our soldiers) right, I mean ‘Jawan khade hain sarhad par’ (the soldiers guard the borders) and this whole idea of exerting force, dominating and constantly being aggressive and that aggression gets translated into very localised formats. So when I for example, worked on the local right-wing groups in India, I noticed that their idea of masculinity is also stemming from this idea of how the protective forces see themselves, these defense forces see themselves and they would try to nurture it. I felt that these were people who had aspirations to join these forces but never got through, which is why now they are victim of this whole idea of this whole notion of Hindu nationalism and dominating certain other oppressed groups. So it’s very, it’s not that complicated, but at the same time it is, and the nuance is necessary and we haven’t been able to sort of like, you know, dissect that nuance that well. But it definitely stems from a very aggressive personality that forms the whole idea of Indian masculinity today.

Uttanshi

Yeah, and every time I watch anything to do with, you know, police representation, even in pop culture, for example, there is a very streamlined understanding, appearance, behaviour, you know that that they depict and just thinking back to a few of these shows that you know have aired for I think years now and have been fairly popular, it’s not just to say that you know, only the male police officers behave a certain way. This movement and this reliance on aggression, this reliance on I have more power than you because I am in a certain uniform and I have a certain level of state backing, I think, permeates across genders who serve on these forces as well. This is, of course, not to generalize and to, you know, to echo your point earlier about how it is something that everybody within the forces do, but as a system, it is something that really encourages it that hinges on these. Do you have anything to add to that as well? I’m just curious to know because you know, often when we talk about toxic masculinity, there is an association of genders as well and how it may be useful for us to perhaps think of it as a set of behavior patterns, perhaps a set of, you know, beliefs and attitudes that can permeate across genders as well.

Neeraj

No, I absolutely agree because this idea of masculinity has been so deeply rooted in the police system and as I said before, empathy doesn’t form the core value of it because generally in our Indian understanding, empathy is associated with femininity for some reason, right? I mean, you are not that harsh or you are not a decisive person for some reason and your heart bleeds for somebody constantly are these ideas. I’ve noticed that when you talk about empathy in the context on the ground, you’re often associated with, like, you know not-so-masculine ideas, I don’t want to say exclusively feminine ideas too, but again, not-so-masculine ideas. It doesn’t have a space in toxic masculinity. The only way you show empathy is like towards your family but your masculinity in public arena does not have empathy driving the way you function. And I honestly believe, of course, pop culture has a lot to blame, but then again, this is coming from someone, like for myself, I have distanced myself from engaging with pop culture that much. So, if you ask me, the last film I watched, of course I haven’t watched films in the past, like I haven’t watched a film where they would show something like this in the past year or two. I do watch some documentaries, but that idea still permeates. I mean, I realized that there was some conversation among my friends about Pathaan, a more recent movie also carrying this idea of, you know, this really masculine portrayal of a defense officer and a policing officer, all of that. So, our pop culture has portrayed those values, but how much of it has already been in our system is something that we need to reflect on because, of course, these ideas are coming from somewhere. The pop culture hasn’t really just written it by themselves; there were these ideas already, of course pop culture has exaggerated it now and that kind of creates a pressure on say, women who want to be a part of the policing force, right? I mean, even today, like I don’t think Indian army allows women in combat forces and why doesn’t it allow it? I mean this whole idea that women can’t be violent, or women can’t be associated with anything remotely related to violence and that’s a very, I mean you can see how toxic masculinity there engages with and shapes really, the social fabric of even femininity. What is Indian femininity? What is, I mean who gets to be a part of it, so all of that. So of course, I mean it is does have an effect on gender per se and pop culture does play a big role in shaping how those narratives are portrayed.

Sanchi

Yeah. Thank you so much for bringing up all those very important points, Neeraj and what I’m hearing a lot is about how hegemonic masculinity actually affects the police force and how we’ve been talking about empathy, we’ve been talking about the gendering of the police forces and how that’s so detrimental to everybody involved in the process. And we have understood that it is toxic masculinity that affects a lot of our perception or how the police force itself is constructed, but I want to understand why is that a problem? If that is something, if that is the ethos of the police force, then why do we think that it is a problem that is the core value? And if you do think that it is a problem, then how can we imagine alternatives for it?

Neeraj

I mean, this is so like, this is like asking someone to change the social fabric of the country because that’s the understanding we are rooted in, that understanding of what masculinity is so much that, an alternative to that would be a more empathetic police force and that can only happen, I believe, and this is my personal opinion, of course it can change and people might have different opinions is by two ways, is that you counsel the existing police force into dealing better with, you know, with the constituents, with the communities that they’re dealing with, right. So, if a police officer is posted in like a working-class neighborhood in an urban space, of course they have to be mindful of the power dynamic they have and they share with the community because, of course, it’s not going to be, it’s not that straightforward and it’s going to be a bit, I mean, it’s unbalanced, right? I mean, and the working-class communities will look at the police officer not just as a protective force, but sometimes also as an oppressive force and this is what I’ve seen recurrently on the ground- that people are scared. People are scared by these officers who are expected to serve them, right, by the force that was expected to serve them. So that counselling has to go through. Secondly, I feel recruitment matters a lot because who forms the police force, how many of them are given responsibility in a particular area, all of that matters because the conversations I’ve had with existing police officers, especially even like some of my family members, not my close family, but of course my extended family members, is that there’s a lot of stress and workload on these police officers to solve a certain number of cases every month. And this is again with the fact that they have to appease the politicians, the local politicians, the national politicians, all of these people. So that stress gets added on and all of this comes out when they work and this comes out in a very harsh way on the people unfortunately, on the communities that they’re serving and say, for a fact that if you are posted in a community where you can show that kind of dominance, it just ends up becoming a toxic cycle because then you exert that force on that community, the community doesn’t look at you very nicely and there’s again the problem and that cycle continues. So, I believe recruitment again, there are two aspects of recruitment. One is the number of police officers that are being recruited, the number has to increase for a fact. I know for a fact that Mumbai is, I mean in Maharashtra, the police recruitment was stalled for a couple of years and people were waiting for that and that still didn’t, I mean that didn’t happen and then when it happened, they had fewer seats as compared to the applications that they had. So that’s one problem. Secondly, who constitutes, what is the socioeconomic identity of police officers who are recruited? Because let’s not forget the fact that defense and the police force or these State sponsored roles were a form of social mobility for a lot of oppressed groups. So of course, like people coming from oppressed caste backgrounds, they had their own regiments after a point in the military and that was a form of social mobility because you get certain benefits, you raise your living standards and that has helped a lot of communities come out of absolute poverty and helped with representation. And I personally feel that when the police officer has a lived experience of living through an intimidated environment, they are much more approachable when they are police officers because I’ve worked with, like I’ve seen police officers in action who came from oppressed communities and they knew the realities on the ground. And they, of course like, I’m not saying that they were all innocent or at the same time very violent, but they had a better balance of this, right? I mean for example someone’s a police officer coming from say my community, who is relatively privileged, would not have the same perception towards, I mean, of course they will not have the same perception towards the working-class neighborhoods of the city or the oppressed communities in the city. But if a person is recruited from that community or if young people from there are given an opportunity to be part of police force, not only will they be more approachable to the general populace, but they’ll also be, I mean they would know how to be vigilant without being oppressive. So, I think that kind of reform, there has to be a balanced reform. I mean, I am not someone who would say completely defund, that we don’t need the police force and let the communities do whatever. But at the same time, I wouldn’t say that, you know, you task the police force with every single responsibility. They shouldn’t be in charge of, I mean, we have seen in the past few years how police officers have dealt with, say, victims of sexual assault and victims of rape and they are not the right, they are not the right entity within the force. So, I feel representation as a whole matters and within representation again, I mean this whole idea of who is forming the police force decides how the police force is going to function in a particular neighborhood.

Uttanshi

You know, something that you said that really stood out to me and I that was actually something I wanted to ask you anyway and it seems like a good setup for the follow-up is just, you know, what do you think is the relevance of the police today, especially in the context of police abolition movements? And you know, you’ve already said you’re not in favor of completely defunding the police system and you know, for the communities to be in charge overall and not to have police systems at all. I think at the root of their belief is also the fact that reform is not something that’s possible and realistically doable. But I’m very curious to know, you know, what your thoughts are on that.

Neeraj

As I mentioned before, I mean, of course reform can come in many ways and one way is to have that kind of counselling, training and you know that psychiatric support to the police that is needed that would ensure immediately that can be looked at as a potential solution. But I also don’t understand the abolition movement in India because this is a very US centric approach. I mean when the George Floyd thing happened suddenly there were conversations about police reforms and that showed how little do Indian Liberal activists who started this whole conversation knew about what’s already happening. So, if you speak to organisations who are working with say criminalized or Denotified Tribes and have at the like, I fortunately I could like, I’ve spoken to lawyers, I’ve spoken to activists and development researchers on the ground and their reality is that it’s been happening for every day. Like there’s a George Floyd kind of case happening in India every single day but that never gets any attention from these constant liberal circles of activism which is needed. I feel like you don’t need for a George Floyd thing to happen in the US for a conversation to start in India, it’s very different. Police brutality is a daily occurrence for a lot of communities here and it’s important like when I say I don’t completely believe in defunding the police again it’s a very let me just acknowledge the fact that it’s an opinion coming out of privilege. I mean, of course there are communities who would completely detest for that statement to come in because for them police is an oppressive force and this is more and more real and I think the police force knows about it, but that’s the way they have been trained to function. So, I believe the immediate solution to this problem would be one counseling the police force in a much better way, creating more empathetic police officers who are more understanding in their approach while, I mean, there’s there has to be a balance between instilling whatever the idea of discipline is, but at the same time not go around hitting the lathi to people who are on the ground sometimes even earning their daily wage right. So that kind of empathy is important and secondly I believe representation has the key to at least to solve some of these issues like. If members of the communities that have often been on the oppressed side of the cycle get a chance to be represented in the in the force, in the in the police force, I believe that could change a lot, change police’s perception in general in India in a lot of areas. So that is the solution. So, I don’t completely believe, I don’t buy this whole American idea of you know what is defunding the police because it’s relevant there because the police forces are already getting like they’re overfunded. But in India that’s not the case. I mean I believe a lot of police departments are still underfunded. I mean the more you go towards the grassroots, you realize that police absolutely have not even the basic necessities to support the communities. So sometimes it’s like victims come to them for help, they don’t really have the measures. In general, I mean, cyber cell, the Nirbhaya cell, all happened after major incidences, so we are a very reactionary democracy, right? So we wait for a major incident to happen, after which we start introducing reforms. But that shouldn’t be the case. I think the pandemic was a good learning opportunity. I believe major police forces like Mumbai police force would take that into consideration when they design their training programs, right? They should have more, I mean better training programs, mental health support, maybe for police officers, also for the victims that that are coming to them for seeking help, and let professionals, more and more professionals be integrated into the system who know how to deal with the situation more effectively because a police officer is not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, is not someone who can provide overall support to anyone. Their job is to ensure law and order, which I think they should be tasked only with that, not with like other responsibilities that would take that time out from here and create newer problems for the society.

Sanchi

Yeah. Thank you so much for bringing that up, Neeraj and I think it’s been very interesting listening to you share this perspective. And of course, nobody has to agree on anything, but it’s been very enlightening to hear your perspective on why you think cultural context matters so much. And something that might work in the US or in Global North countries might not work in our country or in the Global South countries as a whole as well. So, thank you so much for sharing your insights on that. I think it has been really good to listen in to you today and I think our listeners would agree to that as well. But before we close, I was wondering if you have any last points that you want to share with us.

Neeraj

No, the only thing I would say is I mean we need police reforms in India. It’s a deeply tainted sector which needs support not just from, like the government because they fund it, but it also needs there has to be better ways for the police to engage with the community. I mean civil society needs to play a role in this matter and make sure that civil society is not demonized for helping out the police force in any way. So yeah, I think, there are some really good, I’m not some major authoritative voice to speak on this, but there are some phenomenal organizations and individuals working on the ground who need to be consulted, who can be better, I think better voices for the police force to work with. So I believe that every state has it, every district almost has it or at least the major ones. So I think the police forces can use these resources in improving because this would help the communities better, this would help the police better, this would help the communities to look at the police in a better way. So yeah, that’s the only closing thought I have.

Uttanshi

Thank you so much, Neeraj. It’s been really great listening to you, hearing from you, learning from you. And I really do think that our listeners will have a lot to take back with them and to you know continue thinking about this particular conversation that we have had. So, thank you so much for taking the time out to come and speak to us today.

Neeraj

Thank you for the opportunity. I’m glad that One Future Collective has started these conversations and it’s important that we take these ahead. So thank you for the opportunity and thank you for having me.

[Outro]

Uttanshi

Thank you for tuning in today. Please leave us any questions you may have as voice notes on Anchor or in our DMs. We would love to hear from you. This podcast is brought to you by One Future Collective.

Sanchi

Yes, thank you so much. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook @onefuturecollective and onefuture_india on Twitter. And keep an eye out for future episodes out every second and fourth Thursday of the month. Until next time.

[Outro ends]

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 7

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 6

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 5

Youth Rights and Leadership

by admin ● Posted on March 30, 2022March 30, 2022

On the 24th of February, we at One Future Collective hosted an IG Live on ‘Youth Rights and Leadership’. With Deepa as the moderator, a former One Future Fellow and we were joined by Deepa Pawar, the founder of Anubhuti and Sukannyaa, a member of Pravah.

Deepa started by asking what the speakers’ definitions of youth rights were. Deepa Pawar takes the examples of Babasaheb Ambedkar and Savitribai Phule who were young themselves when they started working on creating a change. This shows how important youth rights are in a country like India. We must all help in building a stronger bridge to connect the effort of the youth in taking part in the revolution and we must be inclusive in this effort. According to her, youth rights are no separate component of the values of India’s constitution. However, they do require more attention to the process and implementation.

Sukannyaa believes the stage between adolescence and adulthood is a very important and eye-opening phase where one experiences many aspects of life like work, justice, and equality in a different light. Each person experiences unique challenges and difficulties in this journey. We must highlight these challenges and bring them into mainstream conversations.

Pravah does this on three levels: First is by changing the way we view the youth and avoiding stereotypes where we look down on them or view them through a tokenistic lens of pawns needed to create a better economy. This in turn avoids creating a barrier and empowers the youth. The second is by creating spaces for the youth to represent their communities when it comes to conversations around rights and equality and doing this through an intersectional perspective. The third is by questioning ourselves on how we can create safe environments for the youth to work and build on their strengths and meet people of different identities.

Deepa then goes on to question how Anubhuti has made sure to address intersectionality in its efforts. Deepa Pawar highlights how there is a common misconception that the youth are not interested in politics in general. Engagement in politics must be created in educational institutions, but when these institutions shun students from understanding, critiquing, and participating in politics it creates a bad environment. These spaces must promote political literacy and not political hatred. Anubhuti works as a mirror to show the youth what they can do. The youth have their own lived experiences to reflect on and we try our best to question the root causes of these experiences. Fortunately, the marginalized communities of our country, be it nomadic tribes, the trans community, or working women are naturally equipped to understand the issues that all Anubhuti has to do as an organization, is to facilitate. Deepa reminisces about this process and says it’s been a two-way street. Anubhuti has learned just as much as it has taught while working with the young.

The statement ‘personal is political’ rings true to covering intersectionality. For instance, being a woman, you naturally are drawn to and affected by women’s rights. Anubhuti designs its approach underlining these specific identities as these identities dictate the strengths, challenges, and living situations of these individuals.

Deepa then goes on to ask Sukannyaa how Pravah has made efforts to create a safe environment for young people to grow. Sukannya addresses how Pravah tries to create these spaces without setting prior expectations that are often a burden and allows the youth to create and explore on their own. Our internship programs also see people from different parts of India such as Jammu and Kashmir and the south as well interacting among themselves. This not only is educative but also increases empathy for those different from us.

Deepa Pawar says that creating these spaces is not easy, especially in movements. Asking questions has become more and more dangerous over time. We are indoctrinated with the ideology that marginalized communities do not and should not be given the capacity to participate in political scenarios. Fighting such social biases is no easy feat. When speaking about these safe spaces, Deepa wishes to highlight the need for a support system to rescue the youth when they are caught in the realms of authority for standing up.

The panel concluded the talk by lending their idea of the concept ‘Young Feminist People Power’. Sukkannyaa believes this concept stretches itself to all forms of representation. Deepa Pawar then questions why we still don’t recognize the feminist movements native to India far before the movement was given a name in the west. Savitribai Phule and Fatima are perhaps the best examples of Young Feminist People Power narratives. She wishes for us to resurface these narratives, learn from the past experiences of the women that have helped create a change with integrity and create our own stories as we go on.

You can watch the full video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CaXYZX9pnn2/

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 7

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 6

Explorations on Feminist Leadership | S1: Episode 5