What are the new movement regarding the violence in India?
The Kaur Movement
Mandeep Kaur, an Indian woman, committed suicide in New York, prompting The Kaur Movement, a British Columbia, Canada-based organisation, to launch a global campaign for her justice. Before she passed away, Mandeep Kaur had filmed a video detailing her husband’s assault. The Kaur Movement, which was founded in 2019 as an Instagram page by Gurpreet Kaur, a Punjabi woman from Surrey, British Columbia, continues to fight for Mandeep’s justice by asking the district attorney of Queens, New York City, where Mandeep died, to file charges against her husband Ranjodhveer Singh Sandhu.
She created a network to communicate with and help Canadian Sikhs who have experienced sexual and physical abuse. The Kaur Movement, which started as an Instagram page back then, has grown into a sizable non-profit organisation that connects with and supports local women who are victims of abuse and violence around the world. It has become too big for me to manage it alone, but a group of volunteers, including attorneys, therapists, and social workers, are now assisting in running the business totally as a charity.
Along with women from Canada, we have hundreds of new members from the US, Germany, the UK, and Australia. They are all working as volunteers to provide free services to abuse and violence victims. The organisation also raises funds through donations, which are solely used to assist the women in need of free services, such as connections to local legal and community resources. The Kaur Movement’s major goal was to raise awareness of the importance of discussing domestic abuse and violence in Indian homes. Created a new website called The Singh Movement to aid male victims of physical and sexual abuse. She believes that men in the community of Indian immigrants are frequently the victims of drug and alcohol abuse.
The Indian Women’s Movement
In India, there is an intriguing paradox: domestic violence is not just the most common basic human rights violation, but it is also the least talked about and recorded. Traditional Indian culture’s rigidly patriarchal rules and structure, as well as the clear division between public and private life, have rendered the issue of domestic abuse nuanced and difficult, leading to a protracted and unrelenting fight for justice against the horrible deed.
The history of the women’s movement in India begins with the beginning of the 1970s, when the gender question gained ground and recognition as a problem distinct from other issues and deserving of attention on its own. The Indian women’s movement, on the other hand, dates back to the early 1920s and is a much more ancient phenomenon. Its roots are in the Indian nationalist movement.
From the 1920s to the 1970s, the external economic and political forces of the country heavily influenced and directed the Indian women’s movement. As a result, women’s issues were effectively marginalised and never took centre stage in the public discourse. The Indian women’s movement saw great solidarity during its initial stages, even though this unity came at the expense of significant social and ideological exclusions.
Women’s genuine issues didn’t start to take the stage until the 1970s. Within the feminist movement, there was a widespread realisation that universal suffrage and equal basic rights had been hollow and insufficient in affording women political representation. Several national and international events that occurred during this time influenced the direction of the movement in India and gave rise to the New Women’s Movement.
There was widespread dissatisfaction with what the government had done for women in the nation, and the movement had solidified its socialist roots. As media attention on incidences of dowry-related violence and rape in the custody of children increased, the issue of violence against women became a national priority.
MeToo Movement
2018 saw an expansion of the #MeToo movement in India. Women all over the world began reporting instances of male misconduct in positions of power as a result of a global movement against sexual harassment. Female professionals, including actors, film producers, advertising industry giants, authors, writers, and politicians, called for degrading behaviour in the workplace. Numerous complaints have been made, ranging from unwanted attention at work to sexual innuendos on the set of a movie. While some of these are still employed in the field despite the accusations, others were successful in getting the policemen off the hook.
The Chalo Dilli Movement
Many students and activists responded favourably to the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice’s demand for a protest march in the wake of the suicide of Hyderabad Central University research student Rohith Vemula. Songs, battle cries, and battle slogans were used in support of the protests against Vemula’s passing. Smriti Irani, Babu Dattatreya, and Appa Rao, the vice chancellor of HCU, were also vehemently called upon to resign. They criticised the current union government for repeatedly violating the right to free speech and for its propensity to deploy “sedition” rationale to subdue any political dissent.
#NotInMyName Movement
The protest's overarching slogan was "Not in My Name," a civic act of dissociation from the violence committed by people and organisations who assert to be acting on behalf of the "nation," "public," or "Hindus" but whose crimes have not drawn the official condemnation and criminal prosecution that the rule of law typically entails. The right-wing state-led violence against Muslims and Dalits was opposed by a movement. This new feminist movement has a remarkable degree of maturity, inclusion, and political intelligence.
Political activists continued to be just that—activists—and adhered to the directives and directives issued by their party leaders. Political violence is inadvertently turning into a deciding element in elections. Because violence against women is a widespread social issue, legislation alone would not be sufficient to address it. Typically, legislation cannot resolve complex societal issues on its own. Legislation is necessary and fundamental, so it may provide the push and have educational components, as well as the legal sanctions behind it, that help public opinion to take on a certain shape. However, one must also approach them in other ways. Women are unable to resolve issues on their own. Both men and women should be able to understand one another. To end the threat, both parties must cooperate.
Conclusion
Social movements help a fundamentally different social, economic, and political structure to emerge. The bulk of social movements work to develop fresh concepts that are anticipated to be embraced and carried out by the party’s leaders. Social movements are unquestionably communal actions rather than solo ones. In India, the post-independence activities of women, students, SCs, STs, and peasants were particularly significant since they had been denied some fundamental rights during the British Period and were largely excluded from the benefits of growth.
Anyone has the potential to abuse others or be an abuse victim. In order to find a suitable solution, gender-based violence must be viewed as a systemic issue. Our policies should be more victim-centered rather than concentrating on deciding how many penalties to impose on the offenders. They should spend more time listening to and comprehending the victims and developing unbiased, simple, reliable, and ongoing safety nets that all victims may continue to use without worrying that things will become complicated with their abusers. To prevent the victims from having to fight yet another “war,” leaders in these systems should adopt a more compassionate, multifaceted approach to problem-solving.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462781/
https://m.timesofindia.com/nri/us-canada-news/the-kaur-movement-helps-punjabi-women-globally-to-seek-justice/amp_articleshow/94058520.cms
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1702/domestic-violence-and-the-indian-womens-movement-a-short-history
https://blog.ipleaders.in/social-movements-modern-india/?amp=1
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Violence-against-women-%3A-new-movements-and-new-Omvedt/7615f90fae7a10e61cd3c1c221cd003e8f2beca8
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