A life shaped by Ideology and Social inequities

Submitted by bhawani on Sun, 2007-01-07 12:30.The handshake is firm, the hands tough and she is resolute in her conviction, for she has known the loneliness of the long-distance runner. She is none other than K Ajitha at present the President of ‘Anweshi’ ( an NGO working for women’s causes); one who created headline news in the late sixties with the spine-chilling act of severing the head of a policeman in an extremist raid on a police station in Pulpally: an act that now belongs to history.

Having had her political baptism in the Naxalite movement, the transition and transformation from one who believed in a violent revolutionary struggle to fight the prevailing imbalances in society to a spokesman for women’s causes have taken three decades. According to this rebel-turned-activist, as the daughter of Kunikkal Narayanan and Mandakini Narayanan (who passed away recently), the leader of the Naxalite movement in Kerala, it was only natural that she became a part of the movement.

It was her sense of conviction about the prevailing inequities in the societal structure that fuelled her zeal for political activity and catapulted her into the arena.

As a person who has seen and lived through the heydays of the revolutionary struggle in the state, she is able to explain the reasons for the petering out of the movement in a highly politically vibrant State like Kerala. The failure of the movement she assigns to “factional rift and dogmas that stalked the movement and drained it of its political verve.” Ajitha is, however, quick to add that, “I’m convinced that the experience in the movement gave me considerable inner strength and my actions were always backed by a strong conviction in ideology.”

After having gone into a sort of political exile with her imprisonment for life, Ajitha says, “Reading was what kept me going.” The reprieve granted to political prisoners by the Morarji Desai government at the Centre gave her a fresh lease of life. “The release was to a great degree facilitated by the efforts of the Chief Minister of Kerala, A K Antony,” says Ajitha.

The political environment had changed and the Marxist-Leninist struggle had taken a backseat, but the new role before her was to take up issues relating to violence on women. It was for this purpose that a resistance group named “Bodhana” emerged in 1987 at Kozhikode. Although no ideological leanings were claimed, “Bodhana always took a Leftist stand, where women’s issues would not come under the segment of personal issues but political issues.”

The radical positions taken by the organisation on various issues like the Mavoor strike and the case of the prostitute found hanging in the precincts of a police station, gave it a recognition which made it necessary to formalise the set-up, to make it a more effective instrument for taking up individual and social causes. Thus emerged “Anweshi” in 1993 with a helping hand to aid women in any kind of distress.

Ajitha reiterates, “We make our positions very clear from the very beginning - in a case of violence against the woman we are with the woman. A prominent feature in most cases that come to Anweshi is that the woman is unable to solve problems that are like a millstone round her neck because she is ill-equipped for it. Counselling them and drawing them out of this mindset itself is a long-drawn process.

Alarmed and disturbed at the “cruel silence” maintained by every strata of society regarding rape cases and as a close observer of the working of the women’s movement, Ajitha is of the view that the question of sharing power within a political organisation is definitely entwined with the strong patriarchal set up in the Leftist parties as well. As an ideological stand, the Left has refused to see gender issues apart from the class struggles, she asserts. Often an effort is made to solve issues on the basis of class failing to realise that it “essentially is a power struggle but the issue is gender.” On a lighter note, this mellowed rebel explains, “If a woman is a party worker, she is marginalised there too. What she faces is double oppression - at home and in the political circles also. Even here the stand is - “You make the tea; we’ll take the decisions.”

Anweshi was in the forefront of the agitation to bring to book the culprits in the ‘Ice-cream parlour’ case in Kozhikode. Referring to the impotence of women’s groups in political parties, Ajitha cites, “Suryanelli, Vithura, Pathanamthitta and Palakkad are definitely cases of violence on women but the powers that be have been dragging their feet.” She is convinced that in the present state of things, there is an ongoing effort to split women’s power and “to adopt a totally fundamentalist and reactionary stand and also to bypass the real issues.”

Loopholes in the law are a bane to solving many of the issues and the only way out of this situation, Ajitha adds is “the increased representation of women in the law-making bodies. Visibility in political circles is seen as a must to achieve any degree of justice for the woman. Her reasoning is that, if women constitute fifty per cent of the population, why should they settle for thirty-three percent reservation. It is definitely a “NO” to reservation within this for minorities as is the latest demand by some political parties, says the Anweshi President.

Despite the resistance she faces in her unceasing attempts to better the lot of women, she seeks strength from the axiom, “persistence means victory and we at Anweshi shall doggedly persist, and we cannot be ignored.” Ajitha furrows an arduous path but is sure that “women’s power can no longer be ignored.”
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