People’s movements in the north-east by those belonging to ethnic groups demanding autonomy have remained basically patriarchal structures and not gender-sensitive, said Prof. Manorama Sharma of the Department of History, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong.
Delivering the Fourth Comrade Pyla Vasudeva Rao Memorial Lecture here on Sunday, she said women need to question the legitimacy found by these movements because they did not get justice of any kind - in terms of fairness and property allocation of wealth, power, reward and respect.
Prof. Manorama’s lecture was in three parts - introduction to the ethnic and geographical outline of the north-east, the effect of British colonial policies and how an educated elite class that imbibed Western ideas influenced the people and a brief history about two popular movements in the region - The ‘Nupi Lan’ (Women’s War) started by women in 1939 against the Maharaja of Manipur and another important struggle on the issue of the entry of illegal Bangladesi Muslim migrants to Assam.
Senior journalist Mallepalli Laxmaiah introduced the speaker. Revolutionary writer Vimala, who presided, said that while there was indeed a vast difference between agitations, revolutions and struggles of the 50s and 60s and now, till the agitation for a separate Telangana, one thread was common. This was the way women were actually marginalised, kept out or looked at as inferior.
“Were women in Telangana to be confined to playing ‘Bathukamma’ and ‘kolattam’? This has to go,” she fumed.
Others present included educationist and MLC Chukka Ramaiah, Chief Editor, The Hans India and HMTV, K. Ramachandramurthy and Telangana Joint Action Committee chairman Prof. M. Kodandaram.
Chittpati Venkateswarlu, State Secretariat of the CPI (ML) New Democracy, who worked with Pyla Vasudeva Rao, for a long time, spoke of his association with him.
