Mumbai-based gender activist Harish Sadani recalls being taunted by neighbours for helping out his paternal aunts with domestic chores while growing up. “I grew up in a housing colony where one could see what was happening in the next house. My peers used to make fun of me, would call me sissy,” he states the obvious.
The likes of Sadani are few and far between in a typical Indian scenario, perhaps more so when he was growing up in the ’70s. But not too many such men are found to think up ways to change the stereotypical mindset of their gender. Sadani did.
“I grew up with slightly different sensibilities than my peers, may be because I was raised only by women. Also, as a youth, I had a penfriendship with actor Smita Patil who shaped a bit of sensitivity towards women in me,” relates Sadani, in New Delhi to participate in the just-concluded 2nd MenEngage Global Symposium.
So, some 22 years ago, when a well-known Mumbai journalist gave a newspaper advertisement saying, “Wanted men who believe wives are not for battering”, Sadani was one of the 205 men who responded. “Having come to know of the good response the ad got, I felt, let’s talk to men. Empowering women is important, talking to men about what they think of such things is important too. I realised that men also need to be liberated from the shackles of patriarchy. Men too need to deconstruct masculinity and reflect on it, need to understand that there are other ways of expressing masculinity, not just by avoiding household chores, tears, etc,” states Sadani. He wanted to have a healthy dialogue with young men knowing that “when it is between men and men, there is a lot of ease in it already.”
So began the journey of his organisation Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA). Over 22 years ago when MAVA started, it became a one-of-a-kind organisation in India when the focus of the women's movement then was largely on women, unlike the new knowledge that men too need to be engaged with to achieve a gender-just society.
Sadani got lucky when he won a fellowship from the New Delhi-based Population Council to implement his pilot project, Yuva Maitri. “I began with a seven-day residential camp with 33 young men from six colleges of rural Pune where we did a healthy dialogue on male-female relationships. They were between 18-19, a vulnerable age where certain correction of thinking about sexuality can be done,” says Sadani. They did “simple things”, like reflecting on how they have been allowed to stay away from home in that camp but what would have happened had it been their sisters. ‘Would they not have been stopped, or asked, whom are they staying with, etc.?’ With many such pointers, we drove home the point that while they have certain privileges, girls have only restrictions,” he relates.
Consensus was built on lessening their sisters’ and mothers’ restrictions put by society. “Eighteen of the 33 boys remained till the end of the camp. MAVA helped each develop a personal plan to work on,” he adds. “It is heartening,” says Sadani, “to have met one of them at the MenEngage symposium here.”
Yuva Maitri has remained MAVA’s core project. “We have taken it to various districts of Maharashtra, particularly the rural areas, also to Mumbai outskirts. I would say we have reached out to about 80,000 youth between ages 18-19 besides creating over 500 youth mentors who reach out to young boys in their neighbourhood and community,” informs Sadani.
The rising involvement of juveniles in violence against women shows that there is a need to set the target age group even lower. “Both the December 16 and Shakti Mills gang rape cases point to this. Most adolescent boys have no platform to have a dialogue on healthy sexuality. Pornographic materials and websites have been their main source of forming ideas about sexuality and women. Interrogation of the culprits in both these cases have brought this out,” he points out. MAVA has recently started yet another dialogue-based programme, Umang, that targets underprivileged boys between 13 and 17. “Also, we have a facebook page (facebook.com/groups/mavamumbai), a helpline no (022-26826062) where young men can contact us besides our website www.mavaindia.org,” adds Sadani. MAVA is also looking at schools and colleges across India to take these programmes to more young men.
Effort has been on to bring the men-to-men dialogue also to the print word. Since 1996, MAVA has been publishing Purushspandana , a magazine for men in Marathi. “Maharashtra has a culture of bringing out special magazines during Diwali. These Diwali ank are very popular. We thought why not bring out a magazine for men during Diwali. Each year, we choose a theme — caste, class, religion, etc. to explore deeply. Masculinity is not a unitary construct but is shaped by different factors which have an effect on relationships,” reasons Sadani. This year’s theme was religion and relationships where well-known writers and activists have looked at different religions and how they shape relationships. While initially, the contributors were only men, women too have been asked to write articles lately.
Select articles published between 1996 and 2006 were translated into English for a compilation, “Breaking The Moulds” in 2007 with an UNFEM grant. Sadani has an interesting side story to add to it. “UNFEM put a condition on us that the articles had to seen by some women activists so that the book doesn’t have anything objectionable about women’s rights.” He has a point when he says, “It goes on to show how men have been kept out of this struggle, how many women activists and organisations still don’t want to trust and engage with men on this, perhaps for the fear that men will take over the movement. But the rising cases of brutality against women underline the fact that working for empowerment of women and the transformation of the so-called powerful gender can’t be mutually exclusive.”
