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IN PICTURES: In praise of India's human goddesses

India's women are still among the most disempowered in the world, but a new exhibition highlights how their lives are changing

05 November 2017 - 00:00
By SHANTHINI NAIDOO
Here in the Muslim area of Juhapura, Ahmedabad, a film crew of two women document chronic water problems. The truck they are standing on visits sporadically, providing families with two buckets of water every 24 hours.
Image: BNP Paribas Here in the Muslim area of Juhapura, Ahmedabad, a film crew of two women document chronic water problems. The truck they are standing on visits sporadically, providing families with two buckets of water every 24 hours.

Normally the sight of women in scarlet saris would not attract a great deal of attention in India. But this is the uniform of Gujarati women from the Maheshwari community who are employed by the municipality to collect solid waste. The "shakis", which means friend, also wear protective masks while they work.

Author and poet Rokkiah "Salma" Begum was forced to write her works in a toilet because of pressure from her relatives.

Women of the Maheshwari community collect solid waste in Bhuj, here there is an environmental and employment crisis. The women, who were unskilled and unemployed, are paid about R870 a month.
Image: BNP Paribas Women of the Maheshwari community collect solid waste in Bhuj, here there is an environmental and employment crisis. The women, who were unskilled and unemployed, are paid about R870 a month.
Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India's leading contemporary artists, says female artists “should not take art as some kind of dilettante accomplishment. If they do, they may as well stop painting: they have to be serious about it and continue no matter what.
Image: BNP Paribas Anjolie Ela Menon, one of India's leading contemporary artists, says female artists “should not take art as some kind of dilettante accomplishment. If they do, they may as well stop painting: they have to be serious about it and continue no matter what."

These stories are part of the Women Changing India exhibition in Kramerville, Johannesburg. 

"Our histories have so much in common ... colonialism, towering figures in Gandhi and Mandela, wonderful constitutions... it was important to bring this work here. Too often women in our countries are seen in a negative light," says feminist and author Urvashi Butalia. "The focus on the negative is important, but this success is also important to tell."

In India, clay goddesses are revered, but women are among the most disempowered in the world.

Not only is learning to drive a new skill, it also helps to avoid sexual harassment, which is rife, particularly on public transport.
Image: BNP Paribas Not only is learning to drive a new skill, it also helps to avoid sexual harassment, which is rife, particularly on public transport.

Writer Tarun Tejpal says: "We embraced widow burning, child marriage, dowry killings, female menstrual segregation. We remembered the clay goddesses, we forgot to connect them to the living ones."

NO SACRED COWS IN INDIAN EXHIBITION

A photo from the No sacred cows in India exhibition.
Image: Supplied A photo from the No sacred cows in India exhibition.

A photographic series of Indian women posing in cow masks asks: is it safer to be a
sacred animal in India than a woman? The gang-rape and murder of a Delhi student in
2012 by four men sparked outrage but little seems to have changed, with at least six
rapes and 12 molestations reported daily in 2016.

The conviction rate for sexual offences has declined from about 50% in the year of the infamous Delhi attack to less than a third last year. Kolkata artist Sujatro Ghosh pictures women wearing cow masks outside landmarks, on trains, or lounging about in their homes.

• The exhibition on at Gallery 011 in Kramerville, Joburg, ends on Wednesday. The book on which it is based, 'Women Changing India', is edited by Butalia and Anita Roy

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