Sakuntala Narasimhan: this journalist won't mind her Ps and Qs. (Indian feminist)(Interview)

Sakuntala Narasimhan, a recognized journalist in India today, came to her profession in a round about way. She discussed her career and self image with Frauensolidaritat during her stay in Vienna in September of this year.

Q: You are a columnist of the South Indian newspaper Deccan Herald. Whom are you addressing in your columns and what is your subject matter?

A: For ten years, I have written a bimonthly column called "About Women - for Women." The circulation is one million, but eight to nine million people read the paper. The paper is a favorite of middle income women, because I articulate exactly what they feel. We are in a time of transition: My parents' generation still lives very traditionally, while my daughter's lives in the modern world. The women of my generation live in a field of tension in between. Nowadays many women hold a full-time job, but at home they are supposed to fit into a traditional image. This creates a double burden.

Readers who felt acknowledged in their daily experience by my column began to entrust me bit by bit with their problems, which I in return touched upon in later articles. For example, an Indian Christian woman is prohibited from obtaining a divorce. If she leaves her husband, he will get custody of their children, according to a one-hundred-year-old law. Upon my urging, the Christian parliament introduced a bill for change of the law, which unfortunately was not passed, due to a government change, but will be introduced once again.

The book Born Unfree,(*) published in 1989, contains a collection of my articles, which discuss the problems of Indian women as well as portray women's initiatives. Some examples are a shelter for battered women in Delhi; and the union of women formerly without any means, who cook for the workers of a textile factory, and thus create an income for themselves. This initiative was small at the beginning; it is now 15 years old and has by now 25,000 women working in it. The women have become so strong in the meanwhile that even the police have respect for them. When one woman has a problem, the others rush in to help. For example, in a weekly meeting, a woman says that her husband is hitting her. The next day, 2,000 women stand in front of his door, and the husband has to promise not to hit her any longer, otherwise the women will be back. The organization has its own rooms, where the women have ...