Women’s rights: ‘Love can drive out violence’

Noted rights campaigner Kamla Bhasin speaks at OBR campaign event.

ISLAMABAD: If there ever was an outspoken person on the issue of patriarchy, violence against women and rape, it’s Kamla Bhasin, a well-known feminist from Delhi.

“Violence can only be eradicated through love,” she began while talking to The Express Tribune.

On the issue of rape and violence against women, Bhasin said it has effects on women, children and men alike as they all are interlinked. “Statistics say 40 per cent of men are involved in beating women in India meaning they all are accused before the law,” she said.



A woman is raped every six minutes in US, Germany and France and the situation is no different in other countries, she said. Earlier, it was considered that rape deprives girls and women of honour but now it’s the vice versa, she said.

Now rapists are getting a taste of their own medicine as a number of cases have been registered against them and they are standing trial, she said. “This is a big change.”

Bhasin said patriarchy harms male members of society as they are not allowed to cry and remain gentle, adding that they have almost no relationship with their emotions. “How long would the males be bread winners of families,” she asked, adding if women were not independent, men also cannot be independent.

“Women are not born on the moon. They also live in this society,” she said, adding that “patriarchy is imposed by men but the followers are the women. Isn’t the ‘Saas Bahu’ relationship a reality,” she said.

Bhasin shared that patriarchy was just a fight between two minds and not between man and woman, adding that she was against patriarchy and not the male members of society.

While rejecting the notion that violence against women was an issue prevailing in villages and rural areas only, she said educated and uneducated as well as locals and foreigners were accused of torturing women alike. “Violence prevails in cities as well; it just that it often stays behind thick walls,” she said.

On the question what change she has witnessed from 1970 till today, she was of the view that Benazir Bhutto, two women prime ministers of Bangladesh, representation of women in parliaments, key positions of females in the subcontinent and the world were just a few examples of ‘change’.

Women like Asma Jahangir, Sherry Rehman, Khawar Mumtaz and many others are just a glimpse of the change since 1970s, she said. “If 10 per cent of women can reach the top, I believe the remaining 90 per cent can get there too.”

One billion rising

The One Billion Rising campaign is simultaneously ongoing in 207 countries and will continue till the end of all kinds of violence against women, she informed.

A social scientist, Bhasin has been actively engaged with issues related to development, education, gender, media and others since 1970. Currently, she is the South Asian coordinator for the OBR campaign and addressed the audience at the culmination event of the OBR campaign in Pakistan at a local hotel on Wednesday.

The organising committee included civil society representatives and NGOs. The OBR campaign is a celebration of achievements of women and for a violence free society. The campaign was started by Eve Ensler in 2012.

In Pakistan, keeping in view the current increase in violent attacks against ethnic and religious minorities, the OBR campaign calls for tolerance and inclusivity.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2015.