Bangalore
Time and place: occasional and contingent vigils
Contact : celinejaya.2010@gmail.com
In previous years, every Thursday, every week women in Bangalore have stood against wars and conflicts and the wars (violence in its different forms) against women.
Women in Black in Bangalore have given a meaningful face to the struggles women were going through in other parts of the world. We would stand and protest on every issue that was threatening human rights and women’s rights holding placards and distributing pamphlets. One day before the courts of women, we organized Women in Black vigil highlighting the issue of courts. We have had more than 50 courts in different parts of the world. We have also organized Women in Black vigil during international conferences of WIB events. In 2015, when the International Women in black gathering was held in Bangalore for 3 days we had the Women in Black vigil on the main streets of Mahatma Gandhi Road in Bangalore
About: Black is the colour that we wear, Black, the colour that speaks our resistance. Silence is the language that we speak, Silence, a language that voices our anguish. In March 1993, inspired by the worldwide Women in Black movement, Vimochana initiated the first Women in Black action in Bangalore, India. Women in the city stood in silence protesting the razing of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and the communal conflict that spread in India. Ayodhya that became a metaphor for the violent politics of Hindu Nationalism. Women stood protesting and remembering in silence the innocent victims, refusing to let the politics of hatred and intolerance destroy the humanity that binds and lives within all faiths.
The Women in Black, India in a quiet, sustained way has sought to make public the many forms of ‘personal’ violence against women – wife battering, dowry deaths, female foeticide female circumcision, pornography, sexual assault, rape. Everywhere, women, are unmasking the many horrific faces of more public ‘legitimate’ violences – state repression, communalism, ethnic cleansing, nationalism, nuclearisation, wars ….. violence in the name of development, in the name of reproductive technologies, genetic engineering, and the feminisation of poverty. The issues have been many. The forms in which protests have been expressed have also been varied. Silence, posters, placards, pamphlets and some times lighting lamps, have been an expression of this collective rebellion and resistance. While the above mentioned issues are some of the vigils that the WIB India have focused on, we have also stood in solidarity for peoples living in war and conflict zones – with people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine to mention a few.