Deploring the silence of a vast majority of women over the atrocities and rape committed to them, Telugu writer and women’s rights activist Olga on Tuesday asked them to shun their “indifference” and “make noise”. Popuri Lalitha Kumari is known by her pen name Olga.
Inaugurating a conference of writers of different languages at Mangalore University here, she said what happened to ‘Nirbhaya’ in Delhi was happening to Dalit women in rural India on a daily basis. But the women were bearing it silently as if they were being taught the “silence of yoga”.“We are silent when it comes to the powerless and the vulnerable. We have to make noise so that they become powerful and to give courage to them,” she said.
Opposing the silencing of writer Perumal Murugan and a ban on the documentary ‘Indias daughter’ she asked “shall we pretend that nothing has happened to our women?”
She made an impassioned plea to writers to side with the powerless as many people from the vulnerable sections were not in a position to identify themselves with the nation. Sections such as tribals and transgenders were trying to find where their nation is. She however suggested that the writers should be sensitive to those whom they are writing about. Even well-known cartoonists, for example, had come across as not being sensitive to women. Cautioning that women’s writing about their desires could be misunderstood, she said there was a need to form a solidarity group.
Sabiha, Director of Women’s Study Centre of the University which has organised the two-day conference, said women, writers in particular, have to come out of inertia at a time when atrocities were taking a more complex shape.
Member of University Review Commission Miniyamma inaugurated the conference. Vice-Chancellor K. Byrappa presided.
