Partly inspired by the illustrious Arab Spring, the “Occupy” series is an international protest movement that began against economic and social inequalities, with the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City in September 2011 being the first such campaign. In the following months, the movement, which uses the #Occupy hashtag, spread to several countries and scores of major towns across the globe. Started on December 28, 9 AM, largely through social networking on the Internet, the Occupy Baluwatar protest made strong calls for an end to all forms of violence against women and for broader legal and institutional reforms to ensure rights and respectability of women, sparking a reawakening of Nepali feminism. TIA rape victim Sita Rai and four others, namely Shiwa Hashmi, Bindu Thakur, Chhori Maiya Maharjan, Saraswoti Subedi, all of them victims of violence—have all become a new epitome of Nepali women’s long, tiring struggle for wider liberation.
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Feminism has historically been women’s ideology to fight ‘male supremacist’ attitudes, a contributing factor to gender-based violence (GBV), also known as violence against women (VAW). It, however, does not represent one specific school of thought. As a form of activism, the movement has undergone shifts in its focus in different time periods. While its first wave in the late 19th century stressed on basic issues such as suffrage, its second wave beginning in the 1960s chiefly focused on political consequences of gender differences. One step ahead, the third wave that began in early 1990s concentrated on diversity issues of race, gender and ethnicity, with democratic ideals becoming core recipes for governance structures worldwide. Today the movement is no longer viewed as ‘only-women task’ or merely as ‘selfish identity politics’. The Occupy Baluwatar campaign commands no less young male activists, in defiance to the traditional barrier of ‘intrinsic’ sex differences. Rising above the myopic outlook, men all around the world today have been able to stand alongside women for feminist causes. And this very shift in perception has, like elsewhere, made Occupy Baluwatar protest an appealing site for reinventing feminism.
The American Political Science Review recently published a report after conducting a study it claims to be the largest so far in terms of scope of data. The study includes every region of the world with varying degrees of democracy and variety of world religions, encompassing 85 percent of the world’s population. Titled ‘The Civic Origins of Progressive Policy Change: Combating Violence against women in Global Perspective, 1975-2005’ and published after five long years of rigorous data processing, the study confirms that mobilization of feminist movements is more important to change than things such as a nation’s wealth. It maintains that autonomous (free from political ideology) feminist movements were the first to articulate VAW issues and were key catalysts for government actions to address them. The study concludes that such movements could be powerful tools to mitigate and combat practices including sexual attacks, trafficking, and other violations to ‘women’s body and psyche’.
Autonomy of body and self-determination is a central tenet of feminism. While on the surface it might seem reasonable to attribute sexual violence such as rape to factors ranging from psychosomatic and psychopathic conditions to law losing its deterrent effect, the real cause, on closer scrutiny, is found embedded deep in the society’s unequal power structures. To be precise, rape is an act of power. It is not sexual attractions but gender relations that actually cause rape. Sexual assault is an offshoot of social inequality, the direct product of ingrained socio-cultural ethos that establishes structures of power and privileges. Simone de Beauvoir once wrote: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’, asserting that gender roles are a social construct. Theoretically, unless these deeply seated unequal power relations of domination and subjugation between male and female are reconciled in society, the rewiring of social attitudes for broader gender equality and practice is not possible.
At a pragmatic level, among other things, guarantee of the rule of law and social justice is equally necessary. A protest sometimes becomes necessary to shake the society’s conscience. Occupy Baluwatar campaigners have summarized their concerns in two sets of demands in a protest note, with the subject line ‘Justice and Rule of Law’ handed to then prime minister Baburam Bhattarai. The short-term demands are related to providing justice to victims and punishment for the guilty. The long-term demands, distilled in eight brief points, seek extensive legal and institutional reforms that would not only ensure safety and security of women and strict enforcement of criminal law, but also guarantee them an equal footing with men with an inclusive participation in governance .
Sexual assault is an offshoot of social inequality, direct product of ingrained socio-cultural ethos and power structures.
Compared to the global trend, feminist consciousness grew much later in Nepal, after the restoration of democracy in 1990. It was the time when feminism in international sphere was relocating its agenda to diversity issues, which also helped Nepal set its own agenda around empowerment of women, in general, and mainstreaming of marginalized women minorities, such as Muslim, Madhesi and Janajati women. With negation of mobilization, coalition, political ideology and proxy agenda, the Occupy Baluwatar campaign already marks Nepal’s departure from conventional protest culture. The fact that five victims projected in Occupy Baluatar come from diverse cultural backgrounds demonstrates its capacity to accommodate intricate inter-sectional gender issues, dismantling the orthodox belief that feminism is devised primarily to safeguard the interests of a small group of elite women. Inclusive civil services policies, abortion bill, legislations of property inheritance rights, court verdict in favor of citizenship acquisition in mother´s name, and 33 percent women representation in the erstwhile Constituent Assembly could be considered some key achievements made in resituating Nepali women in society.
One reason why, despite preemptive and penal measures, VAW cases keep replicating is the lack of specific agenda set by women themselves. The current Khil Raj Regmi government has already ‘appreciated’ the campaign for ‘bringing many things to the government’s notice’ and Regmi has given his word to meet the demands, prompting the protesters to effect a voluntary 15-day truce. Also, the reality is, the Occupy Baluwatar campaign is somewhat fractured by internal contradictions such as deviation from original ideals, adoption of political issues, and alleged infiltration of NGO interests. Now that the country is headed to new CA elections, a historic opportunity for women to strongly commit their presence in legislature and script their long overdue rights in the new constitution, the question is, will this campaign be able to carry on its initial spirit and momentum while redefining Nepali womanhood on broader terms in the long run?
The writer is online coordinator, Republica
arunrai149@gmail.com
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