Charting New Routes – Five Rallies, 100 Women and Conversations for Peace
Chennai: From five different locations across the country today, approximately 100 women will set out on different buses on in different state to hold conversations for peace.
Called ‘Baatein Aman Ki‘, the rallies start from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Delhi and culminate in the capital on October 13. The five yatras will have representatives from ten states and are to include women from every strata of society.
The coordinators hope that the rallies will enable the women travelling across the country to hold dialogues about issues affecting India today.
“It is the prevailing socio-political situation in India that forced us to do these rallies” says Annie Raja, one of the coordinators. “The issues of intolerance, mob lynching, increasing violence against women, farmer suicides are affecting our country more than ever. We thought as women – constituting half the population – it is our duty and responsibility to safeguard the constitution. We need to talk to each other and we hope the rallies will help us do that.”
Over 500 women’s organisations are set to participate in the rallies. This, G. Manjula, the state deputy secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) in Tamil Nadu, thinks is success in itself. “We live in an era where violence is perpetrated by those who had to uphold and protect the laws of this land. We just cannot remain silent any longer about this. The entire idea about holding different rallies from different parts of the country is to get as many voices across as possible. We need to strengthen these voices in face of increasing threats to peace,” she says.
Kavitha Gajendran of the People’s Platform Against Fascism will be part of a rally that passes through Jorhat-Delhi route.
A poster for ‘Baatein Aman Ki’.
“I am really excited about it. I am participating on behalf of People’s Platform Against Fascism, which is one of the movements that has joined hands in the ‘Baatein Aman Ki’ campaign to initiate peace conversations across India. I am glad that I was able to pick the Jorhat-Delhi route, covering villages, towns and cities through Assam, West Bengal and Bihar. Travelling and meeting people of the Northeast, which I reckon, has taken up huge political and economic down surge for decades, would be a unique experience. I will be meeting women from other parts of the country merging as a team at Jorhat to travel further. This experience would be as much diverse as the different shades of culture, each of us will be carrying and exchanging along. And I hope to share a dash of Dravidam with the ever-strong anti-fascism rebellion of Tamil Nadu” she says.
In Tamil Nadu, one of the starting points for the rally, a group of young women have come together to make the best of it. So if M. Shreela of Socialist Workers Centre came up with the idea of holding placards that ‘promote peace and resist fascism’, Selvi of Manidhi – a feminist movement based out of Tamil Nadu, did an awareness campaign on streets among women by distributing pamphlets.
“I was hugely inspired by the #MeToo movement and Gurmehar Kaur’s campaign against ABVP. The way they hold the placards to convey a message was in itself a very powerful act and we wanted to do that in this rally too. This campaign on social media really struck a chord” says Shreela.
Selvi says the responses from common women were strikingly different this time. “At Manidhi, we have tried to talk to common women on issues affecting the country at large and women at particular often. But this time, when we did so as part of campaign for ‘Baatein Aman Ki’ rallies, the responses were strikingly different. This time when we went to houses, we were welcomed and people struck up real conversations about what we are doing. The women did not try to defend an act of violence by pointing to another. The anger was palpable. At a railway station, a young girl wanted to know if such rallies would end the violence against women. I see it as a very positive thing because people are finally angry about what is happening around them.”
A series of events, including plays and performances, have been planned around the arrival of the Kanyakumari rally in Chennai on September 25.
Much as it has enthused the volunteers, the programme itself has also witnessed its fair share of problems. ‘Apparently under pressure’, UN Women, which had promised to sponsor travel for all five rallies, withdrew its support at the last moment. After initially promising vehicles for the rallies, UN Women told the organisers a week before that they could sponsor only three due to a fund crunch. At the last minute, they withdrew support for the other two too.
“We have every reason to believe that they have withdrawn under pressure. And it only strengthens our resolve. The government is evidently afraid of hearing the voices of the women. We knew there would be repercussions when women set out to talk. They (the government) knew it would have an impact in 2019 elections. For us, this only shows we are on the right direction.”
Courtesy: thewire.in
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Post poll TN alliances divided in supporting TVK
Chennai (PTI): In a changed political atmosphere in Tamil Nadu with no single political party having a simple majority to form the government post the Assembly election, opinion is divided among the allies led by the Dravidian majors in extending external support to Vijay-led TVK in government formation.
Both the DMK and AIADMK are at unease as the Congress and also a section in the AIADMK express willingness to extend external support to Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagtam in forming the government.
Post poll, the TVK's political prospects appear to impact alliances led by both the Dravidian majors in a different manner, triggering a speculation of a split.
Leema Rose Martin, who won from Lalgudi on an AIADMK ticket, has stated that talks were underway on extending support to the TVK. Her son-in-law Aadhav Arjuna, who won from Villivakkam is TVK's general secretary.
On May 5, former AIADMK minister O S Manian, emerging from his meeting with party general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami, stated that AIADMK would not support TVK in forming the government.
The AIADMK, which finished third in the elections with 47 seats has cancelled its meeting of MLAs designate on Wednesday amidst a difference in extending external support to the TVK, which won 108 seats, including two seats by its founder Vijay.
As Vijay is gearing up for his swearing-in on May 7, the police have tightened security at his residence here. The party has lodged its MLA-elect at a resort in Mamallapuram and has simultaneously engaged in talks with the Congress and AIADMK, a source said.
The DMK that won 59 seats on its own, has convened a meeting of its newly elected legislators on May 7 evening and the party is likely to elect the youth wing secretary Udhayanidhi Stalin, who won from Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni as its legislature party leader.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal admitted that TVK chief Vijay requested the Congress for support to form the government.
"The INC is clear that the mandate in Tamil Nadu is for a secular government, committed to protecting the Constitution in letter and spirit. The INC is determined not to allow the BJP and its proxies to run the government of Tamil Nadu in any manner. Thiru Vijay has also spoken about drawing inspiration from Perunthalaivar Kamaraj," he said.
Accordingly, the Congress leadership has directed the TNCC to take a final decision on Vijay’s request, keeping in view the sentiments of the state as reflected in the electoral verdict, Venugopal said in a statement.
DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai slammed the Congress decision and said the move to ally with TVK, pledging the support of its five MLAs to the party, was tantamount to "backstabbing the DMK and the people of Tamil Nadu."
"They have betrayed the mandate given by the people. Even before the ink on the returning officer’s signature on the victory certificate has dried, they have chosen to go ahead with this alliance," he told PTI.
The most important question was who took this "foolhardy decision, and how is it going to backfire on the Congress?" he asked.
"I don’t think they had any serious deliberation on this. The larger issue is their opposition to the BJP, which is their ideological enemy. We have supported the Congress throughout. It was our leader M K Stalin, who named Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate when the BJP and RSS were criticising him. And now, within a day, they say they are supporting TVK. This is not the mandate of the people of Tamil Nadu,” Saravanan said.
The Congress' exit from its long-standing alliance with the DMK will be a significant moment in the political scenario of the state, commentator and political analyst Sumanth Raman said.
The Congress may be betting on the TVK as a long-term partner option, but that comes with risks, as the TVK is as yet an unknown quantity, he said.
"For the DMK, if the TVK+Congress becomes the choice of the minorities as it well could, it is an existential threat. It was the minority vote that gave the DMK alliance a 12%-15% cushion in the polls. If that goes, their chances of winning drops dramatically," Raman said on 'X.'
The Congress won 5 seats. However, DMK's other allies, the IUML, VCK, CPI and CPI (M) and DMDK have categorically stated that they would not support TVK.
As of now, the TVK requires the support of 11 MLAs to attain a simple majority of 118 to form the government.
The PMK, which won 4 seats and AMMK one - both allies of AIADMK - have not announced their decision yet.
"AIADMK’s real post-result drama may not be outside the party, but inside it. Whispers from the west and north suggest that a Coimbatore hand and a Villupuram voice may soon ask the question everyone is avoiding: Is it time to save the party from the leadership, before the cadre are forced to do it themselves? In politics, coups don’t begin with slogans. They begin with silence, phone calls and “review meetings,” Aspire Swaminathan, who is credited with founding the AIADMK IT wing in 2014, said on 'X.'
He has resigned from the AIADMK in 2021 and now acts an as independent political analyst.
