Talk in History Department

 In the afternoon of 9th August, 2018, interacted with the History Department students on the Bhakti movement and women. I was surprised to see a large number of students about forty five in an optional course onGender/ Women's History being taught by Hmingthanzuali. The class rooms are beautifully decorated with huge posters. They had even put up a big posters all over  with my photograph announcing the event. Great experience and it was great to see that most of the courses are main stream Indian history courses taught in the rest of the country.

Talk on Gender Sensitisation

 Started the official program in Mizoram on 9th August, 2018, with a talk on Gender Sensitisation. There were about sixty participants at the course and most of them are from North East. Had a very interesting discussion with the participants on Gender issues in the North East and the rest of the country.

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With Resource persons on gender

 With some of the experts and Resource persons  who had come from different Institutes for the Gender Sensitisation program organised by the, Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of Hyderabad . Dr. Gayatri from IIT, who spoke on Gender  and popular culture, Radhika Mamidi from IIIT who spoke on Sexism in Social media, Nilanjana Ray from TISS who discussed on Trafficking of women, , Ram Lakshmi a Retd, IFS Officer who highlighted on Government policies on Gender, Dr. Anupama the CMO of University of Hyderabad, who highlighted on Gender and health and Dr. Ananth, a Consultant on water.

Second day of the gender Sensitisation Course

 Day Two of the Gender Sensitisation course by  the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of Hyderabad, had lectures and interaction on the issues of  Gender and social Identity, Gender and Education, Gender and Technology and Gender and Management. The teachers felt very happy interacting with the scholars and lot of discussion took place.

Kameshwari at the gender sensitisation Course

A dear friend Kameshwari came for my Gender Sensitisation course. She was in the University with me in the History Department till 1991and then left the University to focus only on women.  

Today Kameshwari is a consultant on  Gender issues with a  large number of Projects both in India and abroad. We had both struggled to get a Centre for Women's Studies in our University from the late seventees and early eightees  and as very Junior lecturers then we were not successful. We had a Women’s Studies Cell and under it we conducted a large number of activities like Seminars, Projects which would not fall in mainstream history. We got a formal Centre sanctioned only  in 2007. Kameshwari introduced me to a large number of NGO's in Hyderabad and she played a big role in helping us get money for our Centre through Malladi Subamma. I showed her around our building. We had a great time and laughed that we had started our career at a time when senior Professors in the Department, always sent us to receive guests and during meetings wanted us to serve tea and write down the minutes and  were shocked that we opposed it, saying we will all do this by rotation. We have indeed come much further than those early days when Gender was not a serious subject (in the eyes of many Professors), and we were often given some good professional advice that if we want to make our mark we need to focus and work in our main stream disciplines and not waste our time about trivial issues like Gender. We had to struggle a lot to introduce courses on Gender  which cut across disciplines and justify to the senior faculty in Academic Council that we were competent enough to teach and will not bring a bad name to the University or lower the standards of teaching. Today we can laugh at all this for Gender studies has got a legitimacy and there is insistance from Government, UGC to address gender issues  but four decades back Patriarchy was very strong in the Departments.

Field work, collecting data on Siddis

 On 28th July, 2018, morning, I traveled to the Old city of  Malakpet, Barkhas, Badryangutta and finally to AC guards for doing some field work with the Siddis. The Siddis are the African diaspora in India. The forefathers of the Siddis had migrated to India from Africa centuries back and settled here. They do not have a memory of being brought here as slaves and neither do they accept this. They are very proud of the fact that their forefathers were Bodyguards in the Nizam empire. They still retain their African features of a dark skin and curly hair though a lot of mingling with the local Muslim population has occurred. While in Goa, they converted to Christianity, in Maharashtra they are Hindus and in Hyderabad they are Muslims. In Karnataka you have all the three, Hindu, Christian and Muslim Siddis. I had done a lot of field work with this community women in 2005 and 2006.I revisited these people once again. Thanks to Sumanth Reddy who has come from the US to study this community and my two students Rizwan Ahmad  and  Pabitra S , I could revisit this place. Thanks Rizwan for the pictures. I could not speak to women today and may be from tomorrow onwards we will meet many. I did not find much change since 2005, except that there is now a little more education amongst this group. They are not economically a well off group and exists on the fringes of society. However, they continue their  legacy of music and excelling in Sports. They were very proud of the fact that the Cricketer who played for IPL, Muhammad Siraj was a Siddis boy who has made it big and now had to move out. This is a very close knit community and now have become very Indianised. Field work is always fun and brings in a lot of enthusiasm.

Refresher Course in CWS, UOH

 On 27th July, 2018,  the Centre for Women's Studies in the University of Hyderabad, inaugurated  the one week Gender Sensitisation Program with forty participants. I was very happy to see a large number of men and many from the Science stream, Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Life Sciences attending this program. Majority of the participants are from Maharashtra, though we have representation from Karnataka, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Telengana too. It is nice to know that this program has been made mandatory by the UGC and through these teachers from different parts of the country one can reach a large number of students and this can be a precursor of change. I am very thankful to Prof. Gyan Mudra, the Head of the Hyman Resource Development from National Institute of Rural Development, NIRD who gave a beautiful Key note address and the participants liked  the talk very much and had a large number of questions and many participants  asked me to call her back for another lecture. Our Dean Prof. Venkat Rao an anthropologist also gave an in depth scholarly talk on the beginnings  of Gender discrimination and dwelt at length some of the issues related to Gender including matriarchal, matrileneal societies, dowry, bride price etc. I also met two of my history students, Aruna who is teaching at   Osmania University and Shivaji,  from NEHU University. This is going to be a week full of hectic activities from nine in the morning to five thirty in the evening. I am very thankful to my Ph. D. students Pooja Chetry and  Pabitra S who are helping with this program and the logistics of organising this and taking care of the day to day issues that arise. Indeed a great boon to have such students on whom we can bank completely.