Sugatha Kumari - India
interview with
Sugatha Kumari
Poet and human rights activist
- India
by Rukmini Sekar
New Internationalist magazine,
January 1996
Indian feminist Sugatha Kumari is a rare
mixture - a widely-respected poet and a gutsy social activist.
A self-described 'troublemaker' in her home state of Kerala she
has been both an environmentalist and a campaigner for women's
rights. 'I'm very proud to be a woman,' she says. 'But it is not
easy in a male world. Men don't mind accepting me as a poet, but
when I stick my neck into hot water that's when things can get
unpleasant. My life has been threatened many times but I have
nothing to hide and nothing to fear.'
It was the savaging of nature in a fast
modernizing India that led her to combine her poetry and her activism.
The Western Ghats, the spectacular tree-covered mountain range
that divides Kerala from Tamil Nadu were under attack from logging
concessions and Ms Kumari decided to use her talents as a poet
to save one region of particular beauty called Silent Valley.
'I wanted to draw attention to the plight of nature versus development,'
she recalls. So she cajoled and browbeat a collection of Kerala's
writers into an effective pressure group both to protest the devastation
and to inform people about the destruction. 'We set up special
prakriti mushairas or nature poetry gatherings and invited the
public. We were able to touch many hearts with our songs and poems.'
Ms Kumari scoffs at the fatalism which
many Indians accept as part of Hindu teachings. People feel there
is little they can do to alter fate and that change is impossible
-- though in fact this reaction is not much different in India
than in the rest of the world.
She bristles at the suggestion. 'You can't
sit idle and say it is all karma. We are masters of our karma;
the Gita [a sacred Hindu text] says we have to do our duty. We
have to fight, to be active, to work hard. If we can wipe the
tears of even one woman, it must change her karma as well as ours.'
Experience has taught her that it is better to wade into the fray,
to take a chance, than not to act at all. She is convinced that
the stakes are too high for apathy. 'If we remain indifferent,'
she says, 'we will be swallowed.'
Ms Kumari was inspired by her father's
poetry as well as his strong beliefs: 'He was a freedom fighter
filled with the all too rare ideals of patriotism and sacrifice.'
His example influenced her deeply and led her eventually to the
conviction that the writer has an important obligation as a social
conscience. Although she admits, 'most creative writers are introverts
and merely want to write peacefully,' Ms Kumari knows from her
own campaigns that good story telling can be a powerful tool for
social change. When she was battling on behalf of Silent Valley
she found that 'people were much more inspired when writing touched
their hearts than by scientific or technical information.' She
has little hesitation in claiming that ' a poet can communicate
much better than a scientist.'
Although she is best known as a poet environmentalist,
Ms Kumari is also the founder of Abhaya (refuge) -- an organization
which gives shelter and hope to female mental patients. Her work
to launch Abhaya was prompted by an off-chance visit to the government-run
Mental Hospital in the capital, Trivandrum. There women were housed
in 19th century conditions, sexually abused and regularly prostituted
to men in the neighboring police camp. When she visited the hospital
she saw 'women's bodies covered with sores and stark naked. They
were emaciated and their hair was matted. They didn't even look
like human beings.' The horror of this experience was embedded
in her mind and she decided on the spot to do something about
it, despite vehement opposition from the psychiatric community.
'They were dead against us; they told
us they were the professionals and that it was none of our business.
We said mentally ill women are human beings too. They must be
allowed to live with dignity and their basic needs fulfilled.'
While hospital authorities denounced her
in the press, Ms Kumari organized a group of activists, politicians
and intellectuals, who managed to create enough publicity and
chaos to eventually instigate a legal inquiry into the matter.
'We initiated protest marches and rallies
all over the state,' she recalls. 'Finally the High Court set
up a commission. Meanwhile, we decided to do some constructive
work. We collected thousands of old clothes, food and other things
and began to distribute them to the women in the hospital.' Out
of this concrete work grew Abhaya.
Since then Ms Kumari has also set up a
home for destitute mentally ill women with as well as a detox
and counseling center for drug users and alcoholics. The good
news is that conditions in Kerala's psychiatric hospitals conditions
are rapidly changing.
'After 150 years the closed doors of these
hospitals were thrown wide open. The searchlight of society is
now on these places and they will never be dark again.'
Though she has had great success and satisfaction
in changing the real world, Ms Kumari finds equal nourishment
in the process of creation and the world of the imagination. It's
sometimes hard to explain she says, 'but poetry is part of my
being, like breathing. I can't live without it.'
Heroes
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