Women achievers of India-1

The story of Ashammafrom Andhra Pradesh, another Neeraja Banot winner, a socially-marginalised woman who has been fighting for her rightful place in society, too follows along the same line.


At 35 years of age, Ashamma has nothing to share with the world expect tears. She comes from Karni village in Mehbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, where women belonging to the lower caste are considered objects of entertainment. Ashamma was made to undergo the jogini ritual when she was seven years old. As per this custom, she was married off to the village deity. Recalls Ashamma, "Since the day of the initiation, I have not lived with dignity. I became available for all the men who inhabited Karni. They would ask me for sexual favours and I, as a jogini, was expected to please them. My trauma began even when I had not attained puberty."

At 11, Ashamma attained puberty. As soon as the news spread, men hounded her all the more. She was forced to sleep with countless people, some of whom were much older than her. Still in her teens, Ashamma delivered a girl child. "I bore the child from the man I loved, but he did not marry me. Later, I escaped from the village," she says. But all the time she was reminded that she was a jogini and should not act like a pativrata.

During those days the Andhra Pradesh Mahila Samatha Society was running sanghams in villages. These forums voiced the concerns of sexually exploited women. When Ashamma heard the views of its leaders, she was impressed. She swore to fight against the baseless custom of jogini.

In 1997, Ashamma became the head of the sangham which operated in Karni. As the leader of the forum, she discouraged the practice of jogini. Her mission revolved around thwarting the attempts of villagers to initiate young girls into this evil practice. She still remembers how hard she had to fight in order to save a nine-year-old girl in her village from becoming a jogini. The police had refused to help her and no one in the village was prepared to cooperate with her. But Ashamma sat in protest until she succeeded in preventing the initiation ceremony.

The two courageous women -Alice Garg from Jaipur and Ashamma from Andhra Pradesh were awarded for their services to society in Chandigarh on April 28. The award money comprised Rs 1.5 lakh each. The commitment of these women to their respective cause was evident from the fact that both of them donated a part of the huge sum to their respective societies. Ashamma kept Rs 50,000 for her child and donated the rest to her sangham. Alice donated the money to Rustamji Trust which is dedicated to the amelioration of the plight of the poor.

 

Kiran Bedi
Dr. Kiran Bedi was the first female recruit to join the Indian Police Service, in 1972. Born in Amritsar, Punjab, in 1949, she has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the Government College for Women, a Masters degree in Political Science from Punjab University, a Law degree from University of Delhi, and a Doctorate in Social Sciences from the Indian Institute of Science, Delhi. She is also a former all-India and all-Asian tennis champion, having won the Asian Ladies Title at the age of 22.

Kiran Bedi has had great influence on the Indian Police Service, especially in the areas of narcotics, traffic and VIP Security. She is most famous for prison reforms that she instituted during her term as Inspector General of Prisons at the Tihar Jails in Delhi. These included: detoxification programs, improved nutrition and sanitation, literacy and language classes taught by prisoners, yoga, prayer, meditation, legal advocacy by prisoners who were lawyers, tree-planting inside the prison and acting upon prisoner complaints.



Kiran Bedi has also established two voluntary organizations, Navjyoti, and India Vision Foundation, which aim to improve the lifestyle of poor people and drug addicts.

Bedi is the recipient of numerous awards for her achievements, including,

President's Gallantry Award, 1979
Woman of the Year Award 1980
Asia Region Award for Drug Prevention and Control, 1991
Ramon Magsaysay Award, 1994
Mahila Shiromani Award, 1995
Fr Machismo Humanitarian Award, 1995
Lion of the Year, 1995
Joseph Beuys Award, 1997
ACCU-IEF Award, 1998
Serge Sotiroff Award (UNDCP), 1999
Pride of India, 1999
Bharat Gaurav Award, 1999
IIT Delhi Alumni Association, 1999-2000


She has also been featured as the subject of books and films.

 

Alice Garg — founder and secretary of Bal Rashmi ("to raise up, the child or young ones"). Fearless activist on everything from women's rights to public health. She has a ready smile, and is completely forthcoming. Her presence is very gentle and reassuring. We'll meet Alice in her home, also the office for Bal Rashmi, where we'll see her shell collection — for which she's building a museum. (It will house the only shell museum in Rajastan. Go figure. It's the desert!). We'll then take off in Alice's jeep to visit a watershed program and a school in a nearby village.

 

Thanks, Sriniketan for your support and appreciation. I am surprised to find that in a women's site and on a topic such as this very few women like you have posted their appreciation. May be it is because of my name. The moment they see TDU they must be running away. My request to them is to see the contents objectively and not personally. I do not require any Fine post award, but your appreciation will be a rewarding one for the efforts I am putting. My sincere thanks to all those who have posted their appreciation so far.

Regards,

TDU

 

Divya Mathur

Born, brought-up and educated in Delhi, Divya Mathur worked as Medical Secretary for nearly 15 years at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, where she committed herself to help the blind. She is Executive Director of a charity in London, which helps the blind to be self-reliant. An MA in English, she has diplomas in Journalism from Delhi and Glasgow. She devised shorthand for Ophthalmology in 1972 to facilitate her work at the Dr Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences.


Recently honoured with the NRI Literary Award (Aksharam), Divya has been the Arts Achiever of the Year Award-2003 (Decibel sponsored by the Arts Council of England) for outstanding contribution and innovation in the field of Arts. She was given the Experience Corps Certificate of Recognition & Merit to mark her contribution in the community. She was also invited to receive the Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart Award (Honouring individuals of Inspiration and Dedication) by The Peace Meditation Mission of the United Nations. She has also won an Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry by the International Library of Poetry.

A nominated Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Divya aims at addressing the cultural aspirations of the Indian community and promoting Indo-British dialogue at the level of thoughts and shared experience. In 1992, she joined hands with the team chosen by Minister (Culture) and Director, Mr Gopal Gandhi, to establish The Nehru Centre in London, where she continues to enjoy working as its Senior Programme Officer. She has helped organise thousands of programmes in the last thirteen years. The magnitude of her organisational skills can be seen from the number of programmes she has helped organise - over six hundred programmes in the last three years only.

 

Suzanna Arundhati Roy

Writer and social activist

Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya[2] to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother, the women's rights activist Mary Roy, and a Bengali Hindu father, a tea planter by profession. She spent her childhood in Ayamenem in Kerala, and went to school in Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by The Lawrence School, Lovedale in the Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard DaCunha.
Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and became involved in film-making under his influence. She played a village girl in the award-winning movie Massey Sahib.



Roy is a cousin of the prominent media personality Prannoy Roy[3] [4] and lives in New Delhi

Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her fiction The God of Small Things. The award carried a prize of US$1 million and a citation that noted: 'The book keeps all the promises that it makes.'

In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Award for her work "about civil societies that are adversely affected by the world’s most powerful governments and corporations" and "to celebrate her life and her ongoing work in the struggle for freedom, justice and cultural diversity."

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and her advocacy of non-violence.

In January 2006 she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it

 

Vandana Shiva

Social ativist

Vandana Shiva completed her Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science in 1978. After that she did research at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore until 1982, when she left to set up her Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in her home town of Dehra Dun in the foothills of the Himalaya.


Shiva's record over the last 10 years has been that of the totally committed, very productive and effective activist-advocate-intellectual. As an activist she has co-ordinated, supported and learned from grassroots networks on a wide range of issues across India. As an advocate, especially in international fora, she has proved one of the most articulate spokespersons of counter-development in favour of people-centred, participatory processes. As an intellectual she has produced a stream of important books and articles, which have done much both to form and address the agenda of development debate and action.

Her Foundation is an informal network of researchers working in support of people's environmental struggles, part of the objective of which is the articulation and justification of people's knowledge. In the last 20 years the Foundation has done important work in a number of areas.

Her book Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival (Zed, 1989) has had an international impact. She was a co-chair of the 1991 World Congress on Women and Environment, and she directed a dialogue on 'Women, ecology and health' with the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, leading to a volume of Development Dialogue edited by her. Most recently Shiva has launched a global movement called Diverse Women for Diversity, for the defence of biological and cultural diversity

She is the receipient of International Right Livelihood Award in 1993.

 

Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar

The Banyan Tree symbolises shelter, support and hope. In Chennai an organisation called The Banyan has been providing all this and much more to destitute and mentally challenged women. And those who have nurtured this tree are Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar, two women who have opted to devote their lives to this cause.



A Non-Government Organisation, The Banyan has reached out to more than 300 mentally ill destitute women abandoned on the streets of Chennai. Currently it houses 80 women, and 220 inmates have been successfully rehabilitated and reunited with their families since the inception of this organisation.

What inspired them to take this step? It was bitter reality that drove Vandana and Vaishnavi to realise their dream ahead of its time. Says Vandana "When visiting Vaishnavi my close friend in college, I witnessed society's indifference to the plight of a naked, mentally ill destitute woman, lying in absolute distress outside the campus". While the college authorities proved helpful, mental health organisations and NGO's were reluctant to admit this lady in desperate need of medical and psychiatric attention. "One finally did admit her but a subsequent follow-up visit revealed her absence and the woman was again back on the streets. This left us disillusioned".

Getting started was no easy task. "To start with, convincing our parents was very difficult. Although there was no opposition from our families, there was apprehension and doubt". Now, eight years down the line, The Banyan has grown with the financial, emotional and physical support of their families.

Vandana and Vaishnavi have both received a number of awards in recognition of their services. They assert, "There is no greater happiness for us than receiving letters from the families of these women, grateful for the return of a family member

 

Zena Sorabjee is the Chairman of the Baha’i House of Worship. She is also the Chairman of the Lotus Charitable Trust and Lotus Hospitals Trust.


She has represented the Indian Baha’i community at the UN Millennium Conference for World Religious Leaders and the Baha’i International Community at various UN seminars.

Travelling throughout India, Zena has assisted in the establishment of primary schools, the education of girls, and the transfer of technology to rural India. For her social work, Zena has been named Best Social Worker by Nehru Bal Samiti.