Voicing Women’s Rights
Being and Becoming a Women’s Rights Activist in Assam, India
Ida Scharla Løjmand
Subject: Human Rights, MR106L / SGMRE15h Bachelor’s Thesis
12.0 hp Autumn 2018
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Abstract
This thesis is based on a minor field study (MFS) with the aim of investigating what habitus and forms of capital facilitate women’s rights activism in Assam, India – a state described as highly patriarchal but also a place where women enjoy higher status than elsewhere in the country.
Using the concepts of capital and habitus and elements from social movement- and feminist theory, I analyze interviews with eight Assamese women’s rights activists. I conclude that the habitus of social engagement has been embodied early in most participants and that they all possess strong cultural and social capital that enable them to act. The identity of being independent is an integrated part of the participants and it is also what they strive to implement in the communities of women they work with.
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Content
Abstract ... 2
Chapter 1: Introduction ... 5
1.1 Introduction to the Topic ... 5
1.2 Aim and Research Problem ... 5
1.3 Research Question ... 6
1.4 Previous Research ... 6
1.5 Theory, Method, Material ... 7
Theory ... 7
Method and Material ... 8
1.6 Delimitations ... 8
1.7 Ethical Considerations ... 9
1.8 Chapter Outline ... 10
Chapter 2: Theory ... 11
2.1 Capital and habitus ... 11
Habitus ... 11 Capital ... 13 2.2 Social movements ... 14 Identity ... 15 Networks ... 16 2.3 Feminism ... 17 Chapter 3: Method ... 19 3.1 Interviews... 19 3.2 Field Notes ... 19
3.3 Entering the Field ... 20
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3.5 Sources ... 22
Chapter 4: Background: A Brief History of Women in Assam ... 23
Chapter 5: The Participants ... 24
Chapter 6: Accumulation of History and Capital ... 31
Chapter 7: Identity and the Ideas of Womanhood ... 34
Chapter 8: Networks of Women ... 39
Chapter 9: Discussion ... 40
Chapter 10: Conclusion ... 42
References: ... 44
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction to the Topic
Assam is a state in North East India sharing borders with the states of West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura and the neighbor countries Bhutan and Bangladesh. It was once a powerful kingdom covering most of India’s North East region until it became part of British India in 1826 (Das and Lodrick, n.d.).
In terms of women’s rights, Assam is an interesting state to study as Assamese women are said to enjoy higher status than elsewhere in India. However, this status is limited to decision-making power at the household level and gender-based discrimination and violence are still prevalent (Nayak and Mahanta 2009, p. 13). Assam is also an ethnic and religious patchwork with most of India’s tribal populations inhabiting the North Eastern region (Bhattacharyya 2009, p. 20) and women’s rights issues vary among different classes and ethnicities (Mahanta 1998, p. 47). Women’s own awareness of their rights is stressed as a prerequisite for bringing about social change (Devi 2013, p. 69) and as elsewhere in India, Assamese women are raising their voices against gender inequality and organizing themselves in anything from big NGOs to local mahila samitis, which is Assamese for “women’s organizations”. However, social customs and taboos still provide a constraint for improving the women’s rights status in the state (Devi 2013, p. 69) and it is, therefore, relevant to study what societal factors inspired different Assamese women’s rights
activists to mobilize. The answers might indicate what values and behavior have been part of their habitus for a long time and how much impetus for social activism can be implemented later in life. This insight may give an impression of what can be done in parts of Assamese society, where women do not enjoy their rights.
This thesis is based on a minor field study (MFS) of a group of women who have dedicated their career to fight for women’s rights. In other words, women who know their rights and possess the necessary resources for demanding them. The paper does not focus on a specific women’s rights issue but explores the individual experiences of a group of Assamese women’s rights activists to investigate the factors enabling these women to speak out.
1.2 Aim and Research Problem
The aim of this thesis is to explore what habitus and forms of cultural, social and economic capital facilitated mobilization for a group of Assamese women’s rights activists. For that purpose, I also
6 investigate what kind of networks, collective identities and ideas of womanhood influenced their habitus.
Social gender norms and taboos are said to hinder women’s empowerment, however, my hypothesis is that the women who speak out for women’s rights do not belong to the most marginalized groups but on the contrary possess strong social and cultural and/or economic capital that give them
resources to stand up against gender disparities. Thus, I aim to investigate whether this is true and what factors in their life facilitate social activism.
1.3 Research Question
My overall research question is:
What habitus and forms of capital facilitated involvement in women’s issues for the participants in the field study?
Sub-questions I want to answer are:
- What are the participants’ social backgrounds?
- What ideas of womanhood do the participants face and express themselves?
- What challenges do the participants face and what gives them the resources to address these?
1.4 Previous Research
To get an overview of the history and prevalent issues of women in Assam, I studied scholarly articles on the topic. I searched for literature on the history of the Assamese women’s movement, women’s status in Assam and women’s socialization and empowerment. I did not focus on a specific class or tribe, however, articles about women’s empowerment often limit the topic to one group of women, for instance, middle-class students or women from the Karbi tribe (Bhattacharyya 2009: Das 2012).
I excluded literature focusing on women’s movements in India in general to limit the selection to Assam. I also left out studies on the habitus of women’s rights activists in other post-colonial countries although it could have been interesting to place Assam in a broader context.
Nevertheless, some literature on Assam also points out general tendencies of women’s movements in India, for instance, the connection between the nationalist struggle and women’s movement. These authors trace the beginning of the women’s rights movement in Assam back to India’s fight for independence but also stress how the nationalist agenda overshadowed feminist struggles (Deka 2013: Mahanta 1998). It was also the case during the armed conflicts in Assam later in the 20th
7 century, when women’s issues, for instance, rape, were neglected by the government and (male) leaders of the insurgency movements (Mahanta 1998, p. 45).
The previous research does not only illustrate gender disparities in Assam but also inequality between women of different social classes. Articles about rural or tribal women’s empowerment focus on self-help groups, education and entrepreneurship (Nayak and Mahanta 2009: Hussain 2009) while literature on Assamese middle-class women mostly concerns education and the struggle to balance career and family life (Bhattacharyya 2009: Haloi 2015). This is also an example of how differently authors interpret the term “empowerment”. Some articles evaluate the status of women’s empowerment in Assam based on data about employment, education,
demographic status (sex ratio) and political participation (Nayak and Mahanta 2009, p. 2). Others define empowerment more broadly as the power to make decisions for oneself and the power to act (Bhattacharyya 2009: Das 2012: Limbu and Bordoloi 2015).
Socialization is another reoccurring topic as many authors explain the complicationsof improving women’s rights with gender roles, how women are taught to be submissive and cannot imagine another life for themselves (Vauquline 2015: Devi 2013: Nayak and Mahanta 2009).
To sum up, literature on women’s movements in Assam contains reoccurring topics about gender roles, socialization and class differences. Many articles explain the constraints of women’s
empowerment with events overshadowing the feminist agenda and the socialization of women to be submissive. In my thesis, I focus on women who can be described as empowered in several ways. By exploring what in their background that motivated them to speak up for rights, I hope to deepen the understanding of what is needed to mobilize women, who are socialized to be submissive, to fight for their rights.
1.5 Theory, Method, Material
Theory
This thesis looks at two aspects of women’s rights activism in Assam. The first focus is on the dispositions so deeply rooted in our minds that we do not realize how they affect our actions. For that, I use Bourdieu’s concept habitus, which is the system of norms and values controlling our actions (Bourdieu 1990, p. 53), and the notion capital that describes the embodied or material resources that enable humans to navigate in social settings(Bourdieu 1986, p. 15). Using these concepts, I will investigate what in the participants’ early life inspired their social engagement. I will also use elements from post-colonial feminist theory for investigating how the participants in
8 my field study construct themselves in relation to the women they aim to empower – and for
reflecting upon my own construction of the participants.
Second aspect is about the “visible” factors influencing an individual’s social engagement. I will use social movement theory for investigating what networks and collective identities motivated the participants’ involvement in women’s issues. Social movement theory covers several facets of political mobilization (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 5) but as this thesis’ focus is on the experiences of individual participants, I will concentrate on how individuals get involved in collective action.
I will elaborate further on the theories in chapter two. Method and Material
My thesis is based on guided interviews with eightwomen’s rights activists and two field visits to some of the communities they work in. Interview data and field notes constitute the main material for the thesis, but I also include information from books and scholarly articles on women and social movements in Assam. The interview data I categorize and analyze using the concepts of habitus and capital and elements from social movement theory and post-colonial feminism.
1.6 Delimitations
India is a big and diverse country and even in one state, it will not be possible for me to generalize about what a “typical” women’s rights activist is. Therefore, I chose to conduct a qualitative field study focusing on individual experiences of a small group of women's rights activists.
Another delimitation is that the interviews are limited to three cities in Assam and most of the participants were found in Guwahati. Moreover, the participants have been found through networks of people who already know each other or know someone who knows someone. It made my search for participants easier but also added a predominantly urban perspective to my thesis.
Due to language differences, I initially focused on finding English-speaking women and though my aim was to avoid as many misunderstandings as possible, this prioritization has clearly limited the variety of participants. Looking for urban English-speaking women creates a group of participants likely to have acertain level of education and belong to the middle- or upper class. I was interested in stories from urban middle-class women but also women with other backgrounds, so I used a translator for two interviews and the field visits. It set some limits because I cannot analyze direct quotes as with the English-speakers and there is a higher danger that the participant’s own words
9 get lost in translation. I made sure that the translator understood the purpose of the interview and I asked about the exact wording of the translation, but the language barrier is still a delimitation.
1.7 Ethical Considerations
In her critique of Western feminist scholarship on the third world, Mohanty points out how Western feminists tend to present women in the so-called third world, including women in India, as a single homogenous group (Mohanty 1991, p. 52). The danger is that Western anthropologists writing about the world fall into the trap of creating racist stereotypes of the “natives” as primitive and inferior (Mohanty 1991, p. 32).
Being a Western student studying women in Assam, I am aware that I risk colonizing the
knowledge production, which is by no means my intention. Therefore, I chose to conduct guided interviews leaving space for long, elaborate narratives from the participants. My perception of feminism does not necessarily coincide with the participants’ and I tried to keep this cultural bias in mind when writing my analysis and avoid constructing binaries like empowered/powerless. By including quotes, I aim to stick as close to the original narratives of the participants as possible, and I had them approve of their biography (see chapter 5) before I handed in the thesis.
Another ethical issue concerns the different armed conflicts and insurgencies that afflicted Assam from the 1970s until as late as the 2000s (Zulfiqur Rahman and Baruah 2011, pp. 39-40). Armed conflict is not the focus of the thesis but naturally, the violence of the past decades also affected Assamese women and I was nervous about reviving a trauma by addressing the topic. However, one could also argue that omitting all talk of violence would be like turning the blind eye to events that affected several Assamese women. In the end, I decided to only ask the participants about the challenges and changes they observed in their work and leave it to them to decide whether they found it relevant or comfortable to talk about conflict.
I conducted the interviews with the participants after explaining the purpose of my research and having them signed an informed consent form (see appendix). However, on the field visits to a slum area and a tea garden, I only asked for oral consent from the women I talked to. It can be discussed whether that is ethical but since many people in these areas are illiterate, I did not consider it appropriate to ask them to sign a form. Instead, I explained the purpose of my research via a translator and got permission to record their informed oral consent.
10 My final ethical consideration is regarding India's caste system that divides society into groups associated with one of the four varnas that is, occupational groups – the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors), the Vaishyas (the merchants) and the Sudras (the “untouchables” responsible for so-called unclean tasks) (Bhattacharyya 2009, pp. 138-139). Usually, people of higher caste are associated with the upper class. However, there may be exceptions as the order of the caste system is independent of power and money (Bhattacharyya 2009, p. 139).
The caste system is said to be less influential in the social stratification of Assam (Bhattacharyya 2009, p. 142) however, I was advised to not ask directly about participants’ caste when interviewing as some people might be offended or reject the existence of a caste system in contemporary India. Instead of using a potential buzzword, I decided to ask about the participants’ education, job and family relations and see how they constructed themselves in relation to society. The caste system is an important part of the Indian context, but it is also hard for me to fully understand as a foreigner and I do not feel it would be ethical of me to evaluate its influence on Assamese women after only doing a minor field study.
1.8 Chapter Outline
In chapter one, I have introduced my topic, aim, theory, method and material and explained delimitations and ethical considerations. In chapter two, I elaborate on the theories I will use. Chapter three provides a deeper explanation of the method. In chapter four, I will introduce a brief overview of the history of the women’s rights movement in Assam. In chapter five, I will then present the participants of my minor field study. Chapter six focuses on what habitus and capital the participants accumulated first, at home and later, through networks in university or at work. In chapter seven, I look into the ideals of womanhood expressed by the participants. In chapter eight, I briefly explore the different living conditions for the participants and the women they address with the aim to suggest what could mobilize women without the same habitus. Chapter nine discusses the role of habitus and capital relative to social networks and identity, and in chapter ten, I provide a conclusion.
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Chapter 2: Theory
2.1 Capital and habitus
I chose to use Bourdieu’s habitus and capital as I am interested in how social roles are produced and reproduced. The habitus and capital can help me explain what in the participants’ upbringing led them to work for women’s rights and how they see their own role in society.
Habitus
According to Bourdieu, actions are never completely conscious or independent of an individual’s past. Although some actions might be calculated, all individuals carry a set of dispositions so embedded in our minds that they determine what we do without our noticing. This concept is what Bourdieu calls the habitus (Bourdieu 1990, p. 53).
Our habitus is shaped by our past experiences, especially the early ones, and continuously influenced during all our life. It is not fixed but always changing according to our experiences. Though our actions might seem autonomous, the past affects an individual’s behavior just as much as the present (Bourdieu 1990, p. 56). It is what Bourdieu calls “an accumulation of history and capital” that influence our perceptions and decisions and in return produces more history when we choose to act in a certain way (Bourdieu 1990, p. 54).
The beliefs generated by experiences become embodied in the individual. Being born into a certain social setting, the individual is met by its rules and brought up to follow these. She thus develops what Bourdieu describes as “a feel for the game” – she knows how to behave in her environment and she is able to anticipate what will happen next (Bourdieu 1990, p. 66). The earlier an individual enters this “game”, the less aware she will be of what she is socialized into because some beliefs will simply appear to her as common-sense (Bourdieu 1990, p. 67). The socialization happens through acts of recognition for compliance and punishmentfor non-compliance with the rules and norms of the social setting. These experiences form the individual and become part of her mind and body and in fact, make her body. Utterances like “sit up straight” contribute in embodying the habitus in the individual and creates a durable manner of sitting, walking and speaking (Bourdieu 1990, pp. 68-69). As an example, Bourdieu describes how the habitus of men and women are embodied differently and each gender is constructed to behave in opposite ways. For instance, men stand upright and firmly and face forward. Women look down and behave modestly and reserved (Bourdieu 1990, p. 70). Bourdieu uses examples from the traditions of the Kabyle people from Algeria, but he also speaks about the male and female body in general. The opposition of
12 masculinity and femininity thus influences the individual’s image of herself and the world
(Bourdieu 1990, p. 78), so when a woman, for instance, talks quietly and looks down it is because her body has “learned” that this is feminine behavior (Bourdieu 1990, p. 73).
This embodiment of belief is part of the reason why an individual cannot adopt a belief that is connected to living conditions completely different from her own (Bourdieu 1990, p. 68). Bourdieu goes against Sartre’s philosophy of action, which states that “revolutionary
consciousness” is not aroused in an individual because of the sufferings she might experience but rather by the realization that a better life is possible. Sartre writes:
“It is on the day that we are able to conceive of another state of affairs, that a new light is cast on our trouble and our suffering and we decide that they are unbearable” (Sartre 1957 in: Bourdieu 1990, p. 42)
But according to Bourdieu, this approach isolates all current actions from an individual’s previous experiences and surrounding environment (Bourdieu 1990, p. 42), which are exactly what forms the habitus. The habitus then becomes the perception of what is reasonable and common-sense
according to the limits set by the individual’s class. It tends to reproduce structures of the social class rather than changing them (Bourdieu 1990, p. 61) because individuals shape their aspirations according to what is accessible and non-accessible for them (Bourdieu 1990, p. 64).
The practices a group of individuals accepts as common-sense become their class- or group habitus. Homogenous living conditions create this group habitus and members of the group follow its practices without any explicit agreement to establish a norm or coordinated attempt to adjust it (Bourdieu 1990, p. 58). This consensus harmonizes and reinforces experiences of the members. It does not mean that all members of a group share completely similar experiences or act in the exact same way. However, they will be more likely to have faced situations common for “people like them”than a member of another group. People from different social classes will also find it harder to interact because of their different habitus, which can lead them to make wrong predictions in an environment they are not adjusted to (Bourdieu 1990, p. 62).
Bourdieu acknowledges differences within a group, but he describes these as “diversity within homogeneity” that can never be more than a deviation that relates back to the common style of the class. However, it is possible to adjust the group habitus (Bourdieu 1990, p. 60). Individuals aiming to do so need some coherence between their own habitus and that of the people they aim to
13 of social change later when I turn to social movement theory but first, I will introduce another of Bourdieu’s concepts: capital.
Capital
Bourdieu uses the notion "capital" not only for economic resources but also the embodied or material resources that individuals need to fit into a specific environment (Bourdieu 1986, p. 15). Bourdieu distinguishes between economic, cultural and social capital that are all collected on a long-term basis (Bourdieu 1986, p. 16).
Economic capital can be money as well as resources that can be transformed directly into money on the financial market, for instance, property (Bourdieu 1986, p. 16). Social and cultural capital do not have value on the capitalistic market but can instead be exchanged in other spheres of life, for instance when an individual is creating social networks of friends, colleagues or partners (Bourdieu 1986, p. 18).
Social capital is linked to an individual’s family, friendships and other forms of membership in groups. These groups provide all members with collectively owned capital that ensure them
different forms of credit, recognition and qualifications, for instance belonging to a reputable family or leading a big movement. An individual’s amount of social capital depends on the size of her social network and her possession of economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986, p. 21). Cultural capital exists in three states: the embodied, the objectified and the institutionalized (Bourdieu 1986, p. 17).
Embodied cultural capital consists of an individual’s education, culture and Bildung (cultural education). With embodied cultural capital, Bourdieu refers to the capital so ingrained in the individual that it becomes an integral part of this person. It becomes a habitus. It is a deeply personal form of capital that cannot be acquired by others and lives and dies with its bearer (Bourdieu 1986, p. 18).
Embodied cultural capital takes time to acquire and demands personal investment. What the
individual needs to invest is libido sciendi (a desire for knowledge) and time to accumulate as much cultural capital as possible. The fastest accumulation of cultural capital takes place in families already possessing strong cultural capital. The volume of a family’s cultural capital is somehow linked to the economic capital in the sense that the latter provides time to acquire more of the former. So, the longer an individual’s family can provide her with free time or
14 19). Therefore, the process of embodiment does not only begin with the schooling but already with the domestic socialization of the individual (Bourdieu 1986, p. 18).
Even though embodied cultural capital is connected to economic capital, it yields a symbolic rather than financial kind of power depending on the surrounding environment. For instance, being able to read may not be something special in a group of educated people but in an environment, where everyone else is illiterate, it will be a huge competence (Bourdieu 1986, p. 18).
Cultural capital can be objectified as material cultural objects. Those objects can be books, artwork, machines etc. Objectified cultural capital can be acquired via economic capital however, the
individual can only develop what makes her able to “consume” the object through embodied cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986, p. 19). That is, the cultural object was made to address a particular kind of habitus and time and space might have separated the object from the
habitus for which it was intended. If the new owner is to understand the cultural object, she needs the ability to reflect upon which habitus the work was intended for (Bourdieu 1986, p. 27).
Objectified cultural capital is powerful if individuals use it in the struggles of the fields of cultural production, for instance, artistic disciplines, or in the struggles of social classes. The objectified cultural capital then becomes a “weapon” and depending on her mastery of this weapon, the individual obtains strengths and profits by using it (Bourdieu 1986, p. 20).
Lastly, there is the institutionalized state of cultural capital. It is a special form of objectified capital because it yields different forms of recognition for the bearer. Institutional capital is a way of manifesting one’s cultural capital outside the individual body. It can, for instance, be a master’s degree manifesting knowledge in an academic certificate to prove one’s competences (Bourdieu 1986, p. 20). Being able to demonstrate cultural capital yields power to the individual and ensure her recognition from the collective. It also gives status because institutionalized cultural capital allows for comparing individuals’ qualifications (Bourdieu 1986, p. 21).
2.2 Social Movements
Della Porta and Diani define a social movement as a “distinct social process” with certain mechanisms to engage people in collective action (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 20).A social movement is not a single organization but rather a network that might include formal organizations as well as individuals united by a certain cause (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 25).
Characteristics of social movementsare a shared collective identity, a conflictual relation to a clearly defined opponent and informal networks exchanging resources to achieve common goals
15 (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 20-21). I will mainly focus on the creation of identity and the networks as these appear to be the most important factors for mobilizing individuals.
Identity
A central part of collective action is the construction of an identity that links individual actors and turn them into a group connected by interests, values, history etc. (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 113). The production of identities makes individuals define and redefine their projects and this allows for different options to act (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 92).
With “identity” della Porta and Diani refer to what enables individual actors to recognize
themselves and be recognized, as part of a group(della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 91). Members of a social movement are not necessarily completely homogenous in terms of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality or membership of specific organizations. They might share certain social characteristics but what develops their collective identityare their ideas, values, worldviews, lifestyle etc. (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 91-92). Identities need not be exclusive, and an individual actor may feel connected to several groups at the same time (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 92). These multiple identities are not necessarily in conflict with each other (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 93). Identity production is important for a social movement because collective action cannot occur without a collective “we” uniting individuals and constructing the “other” the movement is
mobilizing against. Constructing a collective identity thus involves both positive identifications of those who are with the movement and negative identification of those who are against (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 94).
The production of identity takes place in various ways – certain models of behavior or rituals differentiate members of a movement from “ordinary people” or opponents. Members might share characteristics or carry objects that enable people to identify them with the movement (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 108), for instance, the pink saris worn by female protestors in another Indian province, Uttar Pradesh (Gulabi Gang, 2016). A movement may also gather around a person who played an important role for the cause, for instance, Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. Artifacts, events or places with symbolic significance or ritual acts like demonstrations or theater performances about social issues also help create a collective identity (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 108-109).
The relation and experiences with the authorities is another way for people to connect. Encounters with unjust authorities may lead individuals to construct an identity as the oppressed and the state as the opponent (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 112).
16 Critics argue that social movements are purely irrational because only a few actors might take the negative consequences of failure while a bigger group of people, who did not even participate in the mobilization, will enjoy the benefits of its success – why would anyone get the incentive to
participate? A strong collective identity is a possible answer to this (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 102). The more a movement succeeds in establishing a sufficiently inclusive and flexible identity, the more people it is likely to mobilize. A more exclusive identity will create a more specific definition of the goal (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 103). However, too much exclusivity (that is, too dominant identities) cannot integrate as many and might be a disadvantage (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 98). A collective identity creates solidarity with people who would otherwise be separated, and the trust and solidarity make it easier to face the risk that may be related to social mobilization (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 94-95).
Networks
Identity production creates new networks and relationships of trust between actors and thus new opportunities to mobilize. Social networks are a product of collective action as well as a facilitator of the same (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 115).
Networks do not just help preserve identity but also provide opportunities for the individual and the collective. Individuals can function as links between their different networks and thus create new connections between groups supporting the same movement (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 116). The networks can thus be described as a “particular version of social capital” (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 117). It has been suggested that people who have already mobilized once are more likely to do it again. However, identity is not something fixed, and the engagement of individuals does not necessarily persist (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 96). Therefore, networks can be another
facilitator of participation as close ties to members of the same movement make people less likely to leave (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 118). The connections also create the feeling of belonging to a collective “we” and make collective action more meaningful (della Porta and Diani 2006, pp. 118-119).
Networks also have a “structural connection function” that is, people with certain behavioral tendencies are more prone to become involved if they just get connected with people who are already active in the movement. Holding certain views and having the opportunity to act does not automatically equal action unless the individual is affected by her network. If the network acts, the individual is more likely to act, too (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 119).
17 Critics have pointed out that although humans are influenced by their surroundings, identity and networks are not the only factors playing a role and sometimes not even the most important. In fact, many of those joining a social movement are young people who only have few ties binding them – no fixed job, no family obligations etc. Also, networks do not automatically result in action. An individual might also be inspired to act by an event with strong emotional impact on him or her (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 121). The effect of networks may also vary depending on the cost connected with participation in a social movement, the number of close ties to other participants and whether the movement is widely accepted in society or not (della Porta and Diani 2006, p. 125). After the critique of the focus on social networks, new questions have risen, and scholars are now asking “what networks explain what actions?” and “under what circumstances are certain networks relevant?” There are no final answers to these questions but in this thesis, I will try to respond to the questions in the context of the participants.
2.3 Feminism
I include Mohanty’s essays, first of all, because I find it important to include a feminist scholar in a study of women. There are many post-colonial feminist scholars but Mohanty is my starting point because she focuses both on the differences between Western and non-Western feminists and the differences between women from the same country (Mohanty 1991, p. 64). Moreover, Mohanty stresses the importance of not solely constructing patriarchy as male domination but also focusing on relations between women (Mohanty 1991, p. 59), which is relevant for a study of women working to empower others.
Mohanty brings up the problematics of Western feminists writing about women in the so-called third world – that is, women in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and minority groups in the West. According to her, Western feminist scholarship often portrays women in these parts of the world as a homogenous category defined only in terms of their “problems” and “achievements” or the model of power and struggle. Such representations create racist and sexist stereotypes and portray the “typical” third world woman as illiterate, ignorant, poor, etc. while the Western woman implicitly presents herself as educated, independent and free (Mohanty 1991, pp. 6-7).
Mohanty draws on another scholar, Dorothy Smith, when she uses her concept of "relations of ruling" which is not about embodying a specific ruler but about the way power is exercised. One such way of exercising power is controlling the knowledge produced about a group (Mohanty 1991, p. 14). Therefore, some third world women question the term “feminism” and even regard it as
18 Western cultural imperialism because of its blindness to the variations of women within the same country (Mohanty 1991, p. 7). This fits with how the British used the “women’s question” as justification for their colonization of India even in Assam, where gendered practices like widow-burning were less common than elsewhere (Deka 2013, p. 11). However, Mohanty writes that third world women, despite skepticism towards the term itself, have always engaged with feminism (Mohanty 1991, p. 7).
Not only third world rural or working-class women are subjected to ideologies of womanhood. This is also the case for Western women and upper-class women in the third world, which is why it is important to pay attention to the different social class and ethnic identities of women from the same country (Mohanty 1991, p. 64). Therefore, using so-called “objective” indicators for describing the situation of third world women will not enable a scholar to understand the full spectrum of the women's daily lives (Mohanty 1991, p. 6). Concepts like family, sexual division of labor, marriage, household and patriarchy are often used without local cultural or historical context for explaining women's subordination. Context-specific analysis will generate more effective political strategies (Mohanty 1991, p. 67).
Another danger of generalizing and constructing women as “powerless” is that this also establishes the opposite category of men as the “powerful”. This oversimplified gender differentiation is then used for explaining oppression of women instead of looking at the cultural, historical and political context of a specific group (Mohanty 1991, p. 59). Though women might be powerless in certain situations, there is a problem when third world women are generally constructed as victims (Mohanty 1991, p. 57).
It is important to remember that being a woman does not automatically entail being a feminist (Mohanty 1991, p. 7). Neither is being a woman enough to generate mobilization against the patriarchy (Mohanty 1991, p. 33). In fact, women themselves may reproduce patriarchal norms although patriarchy is often interpreted as “male dominance” (Mohanty 1991, p. 70). There is no universal form of patriarchy (Mohanty 1991, p. 54). Men are also generalized when they are constructed to be dominant, which again stresses how gender is assumed to equal homogeneity (Mohanty 1991, p. 56).
Though she uses the Western/non-Western binary in her analysis, Mohanty does not limit her critique to white feminist producing scholarship on women in, for instance, India. Paying attention to the political and historical context of a group is equally important for urban, educated third world
19 women who study uneducated, rural and working-class women in their own country (Mohanty 1991, pp. 52).
Chapter 3: Method
The thesis is based on a minor field study conducted in Assam in April, May and June 2018. Data from the study consist of formal interviews with Assamese women’s rights activists (referred to as “the participants”) and informal interviews and observations from visits to their organizations, projects, homes and colleagues.
3.1 Interviews
I chose to do a qualitative study and conduct guided interviews. In a guided interview, the researcher develops certain talking points but also considers the subjects the participant herself brings up. Questions should be open, and the participant is meant to respond with long, elaborated narratives (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 177). I found this interview method most relevant as I wanted to get in-depth knowledge of the participants’ stories and worldviews. My interest is not generalizing about Assamese women’s rights activists but exploringthe links between a group of participants’ personal motivation and their social background. Thus, I found a qualitative approach most suitable.
The purpose of the visits and interviews with women in the field was mainly to get a better idea of what the participants worked with but also to see how they interacted with the women they address. I conducted shorter and more structured interviews to get an impression of what difference the activists’ projects made in the women’s life.
3.2 Field Notes
During all meetings and interviews, I took field notes. The purpose of field notes is recording impressions and insights, which will help the researcher understand the event better. There are two main components in field notes: the descriptive data that is, the researcher’s observations, and the researcher’s own comments on data (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 194). The descriptive data helped me remember more details, and my own comments and reflections contributed when I wrote up the field notes and started the preliminaryanalysis. When I wrote up the field notes I tried to make as detailed descriptions as possible and it also helped me identifying holes in my research and finding talking points for the follow-up interview. Thanks to my field notes, I also got a more all-round
20 impression of the participants’ personality as I noted body language, voice, interactions with others etc. I also kept a field diary only about the progress of my work and it helped me reflect on my process and remember what changes I made and why.
3.3 Entering the Field
I found my way into the Assamese field of research via professor Sawmya Rayfrom the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati. Rayis Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and specialized in gender and human rights and she was the initial link between me and local women’s rights activists and other scholars, who again referred me to contacts in their network of social activists. Thus, the selection of participants took place through networks of people involved in women’s rights activism or similar issues.
I aimed to find participants with urban as well as rural background and with different levels of education to get a diverse group. However, I initially mainly focused on finding English-speaking participants, to avoid eventual linguistic misunderstandings and this already limited the variety of participants. Though English is an official language in India (The Official Languages Act, 1963), speaking English presupposes some level of education so when I decided to interview non-English speakers through a translator, I got to talk to women with a lower level of education and women in the slum, tea gardens and tribal villages.
During my time in the field, I adjusted my project plan and interview style both due to time and experiences from my first interviews. I have thus left out two interviews from the analysis not because the information was not useful but because I adjusted the interview method.
Primarily, I aimed to conduct a phenomenological study consisting of three interviews with each participant focusing on the participants’ life stories related to the topic (personal life), specific details of the experiences (work life) and reflections on the previous questions (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 97). However, I decided to do one longer guided interview with each participant and follow up with more in-depth questions. It was both for the sake of convenience as I had to travel for several hours between the different cities and because my first interview felt quite rushed. Quite understandably, the participant seemed to find it difficult to talk about her private life and I stopped the interview after a short time because I did not want to push them to answer me. I could have just switched to talk about her work instead, but I was strictly sticking to my three interviews-plan and though it felt unnatural, I interrupted the interview instead of just switching to a topic she seemed more prone to talk about.
21 I then switched to do one longer guided interview and started out by asking the participants to introduce themselves and their work. I asked more about their private life later during the interview or in the follow-up. It worked well, and the participants seemed more confident to open up to me about their private life when they got to set the pace and begin with the topic they found most important to talk about. I did follow-ups with most of the participants but in one case, I got so much information from the participant in first go that a follow-up was not even necessary.
One can argue that there is a danger that they told me only what they thought I wanted to know but I think I succeeded in asking them to elaborate or following up in the second interview. I also did a follow-up interview with the participant from before I changed my interview methodand received much more information. Because I changed my method I decided to not include her answers as one of the main sources but the information she provided has still been important in forming my basic knowledge and providing perspective in my analysis.
3.4 Data analysis
To get an overview of my data I transcribed all interviews and sorted the information into categories. A qualitative study typically uses preliminary categories to focus the data collection (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 277). Based on Bourdieu and della Porta and Diani’s literature, I had developed six categories before I started the interviews. The categories served as a guideline for the talking points in the interviews and helped me identify lacking information. These categories were: Social capital, Cultural capital, Economic capital, Values, Challenges and Gender.
However, analyst-constructed categories do not always correspond to the topics brought up by participants in the interviews (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 278). Therefore, I also worked with emic categories, which are based on topics the participants themselves express (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 278). These categories served to give me a better impression of what my participants identified as important. The topics many participants brought up were: Awareness of rights, Education, Participation, Gender, Women’s status in Assam and Patriarchy.
Categorizing the data helped me get an overview of the most reoccurring themes in the participants’ narratives. The method allowed me to compare data from each participant and visualize how much importance each woman gave to a certain topic.
In the coming chapters, I will use the categories based on the theories of Bourdieu, Mohanty and della Porta and Diani for analyzing the interview data. I will also compare the individual
22 experiences of the participants to previous research on women’s movements and women
empowerment in Assam to situate the interviews and get an impression of their commonalities.
3.5 Sources
My primary sources are the participants’ narratives, my field notesand the theories I build upon. Secondary sources are the scholarly articles and books on women in Assam.
Regarding the interviews, it can be discussed what incentive the participants had to tell a complete stranger about their personal lives, if they had another agenda than just telling me their story, and how I would know that they told me the truth.
I think it is important here to stress again that this study is not looking for any universal Truth (if there is such a thing) but for the meaning, the participants give to their experiences – their truths. In a qualitative study, the aim is rather to look for multiple perspectives and the researcher assumes that reality is “an interpretive phenomenon” (Rossman and Rallis 2012, p. 62).
I cannot tell what made the participants consent to the interviews but only a few times did I get the impression that someone had a special agenda with talking to me. When it happened, I just tried to keep the interview focused on women’s issues, but I also took time to listen to the participant as eagerness to talk about a certain topic also tells me something about their values.
When the participants stated something as a fact, I did cross-referencing with the scholarly articles on Assam. I also compared the participants’ experiences to the content of the literature. For
instance, some participants rejected that women in Assam enjoyed higher status than in the rest of India (Choudhury, B. 2018). Others specified in what contexts this might be true but maintained that Assam still has issues regarding women’s rights (Behal 2018: Hazarika 2018).
In terms of the primary literature, one can argue that Bourdieu’s theory is written from the
perspective of a Western man and that it somehow reflects, for instance when he is talking about the embodied habitus in men and women. He uses the Kabyle people as examples of how men and women in their society are taught to behave (Bourdieu 1990, p. 78) however, he sometimes seems to consider these examples representative for men and women in general.
This approach ignores women who may not have been raised with the “typical” habitus and
constructs the stereotype of men as powerful and women as powerless. However, it should be noted that Bourdieu’s theory concentrates more on how roles in society are reproduced rather than
changed so for explaining the social processes changing the power relations, social movement theory and post-colonial feminism are more useful.
23
Chapter 4: Background: A Brief History of Women in Assam
As in the rest of India, scholars often connect the women’s movement in Assam to the national fight for independence. When men in Assam started mobilizing against the British, women joined too (Deka 2013, p. 123).
The first mahila samiti (Assamese for “women’s group”) was established in 1915 (Deka 2013, p. 124). Mahila samitis focused on women’s education and social and cultural upliftment and helped women identifying as a community (Deka 2013, p. 131). But even though some Assamese female freedom fighters, like Chandrapova Saikia, advocated for both independence and women’s emancipation, the topic of gender equality drowned in the wave of nationalism and independence activism, and even the mahila samitis became forums for organizing women for the nationalist course (Deka 2013, p. 132).
Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of the independence movement stressed the importance of involving women, however, the liberation struggle submerged the fight for gender equality (Deka 2013, p. 134). Women were encouraged to be politically active and mobilize but their activities were initially related to their traditional roles as housewives and mothers. Women were responsible for providing shelter, cooking and weaving for the male activists and they were valued for their capacity of “suffering and self-sacrifice” (Deka 2013, pp. 125-128).
Despite the subordination of the feminist agenda, the independence movement enabled women to enter the public sphere. In the 1930s, the women’s participation in the national movement extended to recruiting volunteers, collecting funds and campaigning (Deka 2013, p. 129-130). In the 1940s, women even participated in combat (Deka 2013, p. 136). This was also the case in Assam, where a 19-year-old village girl Joya Thaosen led a militant group against the British (Deka 2013, p. 139). Though the independence movement deserves credit for involving women in politics, the
mobilization still happened within the frame of patriarchy and women had to break with social norms to attend armed conflict, open their homes for activists and distribute propaganda (Deka 2013, p. 133).
The independence movement was not enough to voice women’s issues in Assam. In fact, the “catalyst year” for the Assamese women’s movement was only in 1975, the International Women’s Year, that spurred action against gender discrimination from old mahila samitis and new
organizations (Mahanta 1998, p. 43). Women mobilized against the discrimination they faced in law, politics and economics. However, those protests mainly took place among urban middle-class women (Mahanta 1998, p. 44). Even in women’s groups and parties with many rural followers,
24 educated urban women led the awareness raising of women’s issues, for instance by publishing magazines and holding seminars against rape and dowry deaths (Mahanta 1998, p. 45).
The Assamese women’s movement in the 1970s was rather scattered and organizations mobilizing separated groups of women, for instance, the different tribal women’s groups, were more successful (Mahanta 1998, p. 46). Assam is a very diverse state and the difference between the rural and urban population also makes for different struggles for different women. Women from the city
sympathized with rural women raped during the insurgencies but did not feel the same attack on their “human dignity”. The Assamese women’s movement was not one movement but sectarian and focused on ethnicity of women (Mahanta 1998, pp. 47-48).
Various authors stress the need for a united women’s movement in Assam, a movement that includes women from all classes (Hussain 2015: Mahanta 1998: Nayak and Mahanta 2009). The history of women’s rights activism in Assam is often presented as the history of wealthy, well-educated women leading the poor and unwell-educated. However, as shown in chapter 1.4, but struggles vary in all layers of society and education and work does not automatically free women from discrimination (Bhattacharyya 2009: Haloi 2015). As the following chapters will illustrate, becoming agents of change are neither something limited to a certain class of women.
Chapter 5: The Participants
In this chapter, I will present the participants to provide an overview of their background and experiences.
Arpana Choudhury:
Arpana Choudhury is 26 years old and from Tezpur, where she still lives with her parents.
She describes her background as middle-class with a father who is a businessman and a mother who is a homemaker. Choudhury herself holds a master’s degree in Mass Communication and
Journalism from Tezpur University and has been working with women’s issues for 3.5 years. She started as an academic intern in the organization PAJHRA that works for rights for the Adivasi people. The term “Adivasi” is used all over India by communities identifying as indigenous inhabitants of an area but in Assam, the word refers to the people who work or used to work in the state’s numerous tea plantations (Sharma and Khan 2018, pp. 187-188).
Before working in PAJHRA, Choudhury did not have any relation to the Adivasis and according to herself, she had many negative prejudices about tea garden workers. But the work changed her
25 perspective and after the internship, she continued as a volunteer. Through PAJHRA, Choudhury was introduced to the human rights organization Nazdeek, where she started working full-time after finishing her degree. In Nazdeek, she was monitoring and mapping violations of Adivasi women’s right to health and educating a group of women to become community paralegals – women who know their rights and pass on that knowledge to the rest of the women in the community. Choudhury’s work got her listed on Forbes India’s “30 under 30” list in 2017 (Srivstava, 2017). Choudhury is now a Programs Associate in the organization Green Hub. On voluntary basis, she has co-founded the organizations Women Empowerment and Development Organization (WE DO), QueerTessential and Youth for Change Tezpur. These organizations work with respectively
women’s rights, anti-trafficking, LGBTQ+ rights and taboos and gender stereotypes.
According to Choudhury, what connects her to the women she works with is that neither of them are given their rights. Choudhury identifies as queer and describes how difficult it is coming out knowing that society, including her own parents, would not accept her. However, she got the courage to engage in queer rights activism after making friends from the queer community in Assam. Meeting other activists has been important for Choudhury in her process of becoming a human rights activist herself. She says that working with PAJHRA and Nazdeek changed her life and also describes how the job in Nazdeek “brought out the feminist” in her.
Banamallika Choudhury:
Banamallika Choudhury is 42 years old and from Guwahati, where she lives with her partner and their 3-year-old daughter. She describes her background as middle-class. She studied
Developmental Economics at Jadavpur University in Kolkata and has worked in the development sector since 1999. Her work has taken her to multiple places like Delhi, Bangalore, around in North East India and South Africa and Thailand.
Today, Choudhury founded her own organization NEthing (to be pronounced like “anything”) that uses art and culture to voice North East Indian women’s issues. She is also a member of Asian Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), a network of women’s rights organizations and activists in Asia and the Pacific, and she conducts feminist participatory action research with women in North East India. She earns for her living as an independent consultant for NGOs. All other activities are unpaid and her partner’s family’s hotel business is what sustains the family.
26 Choudhury first got involved in women’s rights activism when she was in university. It was in the 1990s when HIV was a hot topic and Kolkata’s sex workers organized themselves to pressure their customers to use condoms. Choudhury was introduced to the sex workers through a university professor who was also involved in the protests. She became a part of the sex workers’ rights campaign and later, she continued the women’s rights path.
Choudhury describes her parents as very social and active. Her mother was a homemaker but also part of a mahila samiti (Assamese women’s group). Her father was a policeman. Both parents were into art and culture and had many “interesting friends” like communists and intellectuals that Choudhury enjoyed listening to. She always liked the people with new ideas more. In university, her favorite teachers were those who were radical leftists and questioning everything.
Binita Hazarika:
From a very young age, Binita Hazarika experienced discrimination – not at first hand but through her mother’s work as a women’s rights activist. She was a homemaker but also active in an NGO working with menstrual health among women in tea plantations. At home, Hazarika listened to her mother’s stories about her work and she also met women who came to their house to ask her parents for help. At the age of 18, she received the women in case her mother was not home. She would help them apply for welfare support and when the women received their benefits, they would come back to thank her. Hazarika says she felt a great happiness when that happened.
Today, Hazarika is 35 years old and works full-time as a lawyer. She lives in Guwahati, but her hometown is a small village in the Sonitpur district of Assam, and she proudly informs that she is the first female lawyer from her village. Part of Hazarika’s decision to study law stems from the discrimination she saw as a child, which made her think that she should do something about that injustice. According to herself, she has wanted to work for women’s rights when she was 10 or 11 years old.
Since 2015, Hazarika has been a legal fellow in Women’s Fund Asia (WFA). In the fellowship, she does a number of free cases for women who cannot pay, representing i.e. victims of violence. She also conducts research on the implementation of the domestic violence act from 2005, investigating how much time cases are taking, whether women are granted reliefs and what is the sentence. Hazarika sees WFA as a platform for learning and meeting like-minded women. She receives some payment in connection with the fellowship program and all her expenses are covered.
27 For a short period, Hazarika left her job in the court due to frustration over all the cases of sexual harassment of female lawyers. However, she returned. Despite the problems with discrimination and harassment of female lawyers and clients in her workplace, she feels that the court is where she can make a difference using her academic education.
Mehzebin Rahman:
Mehzebin Rahman is 27 years old and from Guwahati. She has a master’s degree in Sociology and has worked in Youth for Unitary Voluntary Action (YUVA) since 2016. YUVA is a Mumbai-based organization with a project in Guwahati on the rights of urban slum-dwellers.
Rahman and her colleague work to form self-help groups for women in the slum and ensure a minimum wage for domestic workers, who are mainly women. The project will expire in 2019, and the plan is that the slum-dwellers shall continue the fight for rights on their own afterward.
Before YUVA, Rahman did an internship in the organization Jhai Foundation where she documented the socio-economic conditions for people in rural Assam. She got involved in Jhai Foundation when she wanted to start a Ph.D. and decided to try a research job first to get more experience. After making the survey for Jhai Foundation, she decided to look for a similar job. According to Rahman, her work with YUVA made her more aware of her own rights and India’s different social security schemes. She sees awareness as an important way out of marginalization, but it is equally important that marginalized people have access to the authorities that are supposed to grant them these rights. This motivates her to continue her work.
Rahman describes her family as a middle-class family that had “the minimum source to get everything we needed” because father was a government servant. Her parents gave her what she calls the privilege of education. She recalls experiencing vast economic differences between people already when she was in school. When the Right to Education Act was implemented, children from lower classes got access to her school, which they previously had been unable to pay for, because seats were reserved for them. Back then, Rahman wondered how the poor students managed to pay but later, she realized that the reason was the new act.
Monisha Behal:
Monisha Behal is 66 years and from Tezpur, but she also spent many years in Delhi where she studied in Jawaharlal Nehru University, got married and first started working with women’s rights.
28 Initially, Behal’s interest was not women’s issues but ethnic communities and religion. She did a Ph.D. on Vaishnavite Hinduism in Assam but gradually her interest moved from popular religion to women. In 1980, she started working in the Delhi-based organization Center for Women’s
Development Studies (CWDS) and according to her, that was when she realized the inequalities between men and women and the importance of studying women – in North India as well as in Assam. A few years later, she took a job in the local mahila samiti in her hometown. In 1995, she co-founded the organization North East Network (NEN) to extend her work outside Tezpur. Today, NEN has offices in the states of Assam, Meghalaya and Nagaland. The organization works with women in governance, violence against women and also on natural resource management. Behal is the CEO and her job is mainly to raise funds and advise the new directors of each state office. She lives in Guwahati while her husband stays in Delhi. They take turns to visit each other.
Behal describes her family as very liberal. Her father was a businessman, and her mother was active in the Tezpur mahila samiti together with Behal’s aunt. Both her parents were influenced by
Gandhi’s ideas and the Indian independence movement, and Behal’s grandmother was one of the founders of the Tezpur mahila samiti. Behal recalls how she from a very young age listened to the social issues her family discussed around the dinner table: “It was a part of my life.”
According to Behal, her childhood was happy, and she was never aware that violence against women existed in Assam until the victims came to her with their stories. As a young girl, she experienced catcalling and harassment on the streets, but she never felt discriminated against in her family. Her father did not mind having a daughter who preferred to play with boys and was
interested in cars and mechanics. However, she recalls other relatives – aunts and uncles – telling her to dress “like a girl” and not play with the boys.
Pooja Nirala:
For Pooja Nirala, her political belief is what drives her in her work against discrimination. At the age of 15, she joined the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), a socialist association working for students’ rights, and she was an active member for nine years. SFI also works against
discrimination of female students and has, for instance, demanded that all schools and universities set up a gender sensitization committee against sexual harassment.
29 Today, Nirala is 29 and no longer a student but she continues to volunteer for Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), another left-wing organization. Both SFI and DYFI have ties with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), where Pooja is also a member.
Nirala studied journalism and though she did not finish her degree, she runs her own online news site beside her volunteer work. Because of her experience in activism, she was also hired as a consultant for YUVA. Together with Mehzebin Rahman, she works to ensure legal rights for domestic helpers, who are mainly women. What motivates her is her desire for a classless society where everyone is equal.
Nirala comes from a working-class family. They were originally farmers from a rural village in the Baksa district in Assam but for personal reasons, they moved to Guwahati, where her father got a job in a factory. Niralas father is also a communist and member of CPI(M).
As daughter of a factory worker Nirala experienced discrimination in two ways. According to her, she and other working-class children did not get a good education because the quality of education in public schools is too low, and workers cannot afford to put their children in private schools. Nirala also experienced “hidden discrimination” of girls and women in society. According to Nirala, decisions – in politics as well as the households – are always made by men, and there are only a few women in administration and politics. When visiting rural areas, Nirala also experienced being told to not dress in jeans and t-shirt, and she is still met by questions about why she is almost 30 and not married. However, she describes her own father as an openminded and progressive man who always allowed her to do what she wants and never pressured her to marry.
Riturekha Baruah:
Riturekha Baruah is 32 years old and from Jorhat. She has a master’s degree in Political Science and a post-graduate diploma in Peace and Conflict Studies from Gauhati University. Since 2011, she has worked as District Program Officer in the Jorhat Boat Clinic that provides medical service to communities in the river islands of Brahmaputra. The job demands that she stays on the boat clinic 18 days per month, so she divides her time between the boat, Jorhat and her husband’s home in the city Dibrugarh. Everywhere she goes, she brings her 1-year-old daughter.
Together with her team, Baruah also organizes awareness camps on women’s health in the island communities, for instance, information for pregnant women about health, diet and rest. Before working in the boat clinic, she did research on armed conflict’s impact on women in Assam, and her
30 dream is to continue in a research job on women’s rights in armed conflict. Her motivation she ascribes to her father, who used to openly discuss the conflict between the Indian state and the United Liberation Front Assam (ULFA), which had its “golden period” in the 1990s, when Baruah was young. She grew up listening to her father and his friends talking about the conflict and other social issues in Assam. Her father also established a youth club for the local boys and encouraged Baruah and her sisters to work for their community.
Baruah’s parents are now dead. But during her upbringing, they always told her to do whatever makes her happy. This advice she still follows. Although it is difficult to balance work- and family life she does not want to quit her job. Other relatives have advised her to become a housewife after having her daughter but Baruah’s husband is proud of his wife’s work and helps taking care of their child, so she gets time to focus on her job.
Baruah’s marriage was arranged by her relatives, who wanted her to marry at the age of 28. However, they allowed her to meet the man first and choose if she wanted him. Baruah said yes to her husband for the very reason that he was willing to let her continue her job on the boat clinic and today, their arranged marriage is converted to love, as she puts it.
Sinumoni Bora:
Sinumoni Bora does not have a picture of her mother. The only photo, showing her mother with some relatives who were involved in ULFA, was buried in the family’s backyard along with any other items that could suggest a connection with the rebel group during the insurgencies in Assam. Bora is from a village in an area, where many ULFA members were hiding. In the search for the rebels, the police and Indian army tortured and raped villagers so together with the local mahila samiti Bora started to protest.
Bora’s activism was inspired by different actors. Since she was around 11 years old, she enjoyed reading books about freedom fighters like George Washington and the Assamese revolutionary Bishnu Prasad Rabha. She was also inspired by her mother, who stood up against her father when he did not treat the family well, and the women from the mahila samiti, who were not highly educated but very engaged in their society. The group arranged children’s activities, which Bora joined as a child and led as a teenager. She also listened to the older women’s discussions and joined their protests when the violence began. Later, she joined various other women’s rights organizations. But her involvement had a price. Bora’s younger brother was beaten by the police
31 and imprisoned for four months because she protested the human rights violations. Bora recalls that period in her village as a time when everyone was scared all the time. But according to her, it only increased her urge to fight for her rights.
All this happened when Bora was a teenager and a young woman. Today, she is 39 years old and works in the Jorhat-based organization Purva Bharati Educational Trust (PBET). She gives counseling to victims of rape and domestic violence and advocates tea garden women’s rights. In 2014, she received an award from the National Foundation of India for her work (Pbetassam.org, 2016).
Because of the violence in her village, Bora was not able to continue her studies. She completed her secondary school but has no higher education. According to herself, she comes from a “dustbin” with very poor living conditions but she wants to prove that even uneducated village women can achieve a leadership position.
Chapter 6: Accumulation of History and Capital
Recalling Bourdieu’s description of habitus as a “product of history”, it is interesting to notice that many participants experienced an early encounter with social issues like discrimination, poverty and violence. Mostly, these issues did not affect the participants themselves, but they grew up in an environment where social matters were openly discussed, and the participants’ relatives were engaged in society (Baruah 2018: Choudhury 2018: Behal 2018: Nirala 2018: Bora 2018). Hazarika (2018) experienced the discrimination of the women in tea gardens through her mother’s activism and according to her, it was what made her decide to become a lawyer already by the age of 10 or 11:
“That way I got interested and it came to my mind that I should work for them (women, my
addition). That’s why I chose law as my profession – so that I can work for them.” (Hazarika, 2018) For the participants with a socially active family, awareness of and work with social issues have been a part of their upbringing and their cultivation or Bildung. From early on, it may have become embodied in them as cultural capital and a habitus.
A. Choudhury’s history differs in some ways. She grew up without awareness of the rights
