You Say Kolkata, I Say Calcutta

Ever since reading "City of Joy," Calcutta has always intrigued me.   The mere mention of its name conjures up exotic mystery, contradictions, and adventure.  After very productive meetings with PROOF's partners there, and an afternoon and evening of speed sightseeing and partying with our hosts, it seems to me that the capital of West Bengal (one of 22 Indian states) is very different from the one described in the book, written so many decades ago.   The city made famous by Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi is filled with the vestiges of both decaying and newly renovated colonial buildings and shows very obvious signs that India is most definitely swiftly moving from "developing" to "developed" nation status.

Kolkata or Calcutta?  Which is it?

The Indian government changed the old colonial spelling of many of its cities in recent years in a tilt toward national pride.  Calcutta became Kolkata.  Bombay is now Mumbai and what was formerly Madras is now known as Chennai, among other changed names.    I thought that it might be offensive to use the old name and was diligent about my pronunciation when speaking to Indians.  However, it was finally explained to me that when Indians speak in Hindi they say the new name but when speaking in English they often use the old, British pronunciation -  similar to the French, for example, who say "Pa-ree" when speaking in their language, but use "Paris" when conversing in English.  

We met at the crack of dawn at the office of DRIK India, the leading photo agency in Southeast Asia, which uses the power of visual media to bring about social change.  It's projects include education about HIVAIDS,  poverty and class distinctions, human rights issues and violence against women and children, including rape and sex trafficking.   The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm how PROOF could help advance the the organization's goals.  Other potential partners, invited by DRIK, also were in attendance, including several women's rights groups.

We reviewed, in detail, the intended project - a campaign to educate, advocate and bring needed resources to small villages throughout West Bengal. The major hurdle, we learned, is the protection of the women brave enough to come forward with their stories and the activists who support them.

West Bengal is the rape capital of a country notorious for violence against women.  The government here, as elsewhere in India, often turns a blind eye to the rape claim, or worse.  It has been known to use intimidation, threats and bribes to influence victims, witnesses and advocates to drop claims, ostracizes survivors as well as their families and supporters, and often buries sexual violence cases in a mountain of bureaucracy.  Corruption is rampant.  International pressure however is mounting and tourism is falling. The government is beginning to worry.   A world-wide organization like PROOF, they said, will provide much cover and protection to the small army on the ground.

The meeting was interrupted by the screams, shouts and cursing of two men downstairs.   It seems, we were told, that this happens quite often.   The two men are brothers in the same business.   One of them, according to the other, had taken some cash profits and gambled it away.

We soldiered on ignoring the ruckus.

We were told that blatant confrontation with the government must be avoided at all costs if the project is to succeed.  Any campaign that is aimed at government indifference could result in an immediate shutdown for "agitation."  Trials on the agitation issue, could take decades.  The State government here recently enacted a new law which prohibits anyone, including journalists, social workers and activists  from speaking to a rape victim or any member of her family, even if the victim is willing and eager to tell her story.  Testimony will have to be collected in the utmost secrecy.  There was hope that the law would be repealed shortly due to international pressure.   Some of the more notorious rape stories that happened in West Bengal and which received wide global publicity include the gang rape of a 16-year by the same gang -twice -(!) - as punishment for refusing to drop her criminal charges.   She was finally doused in kerosene,  set on fire and died of her injuries.   Another case involved the gang rape of a 20-year-old  by the men of her  village.  The men had been ordered by the village elders to commit the crime as punishment for what the entire community viewed as "loose" behavior. The girl had been caught talking, unchaperoned, to a man from another village and had been "rebellious" throughout her young life.   She is currently in hiding with her family and has pressed charges against her rapists, many of whom were married.   The entire village, including the wives of many of the men, is now claiming that the rape never took place despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Representatives from the women's groups attending the meeting, included a particularly fierce, passionate activist for women with disabilities who are often shunned for their disability and suffer disproportionately from vicious crimes at greater frequency than the general female public.  The activist is herself is a victim of polio. She told us about a recent incident of a particularly brutal rape, torture and murder.   The 16-year-old girl had her legs opened and pulled apart after the gang rape.  Not a single one of the perpetrators has been brought to justice.

The Governor of the West Bengal is a women and there had been high hopes that she would bring about the necessary reforms.   She is as dismissive of rape victims as the men who preceded her.

Everyone in the room agreed that violence against women is on the upswing in India; that it is not simply that more victims are coming forward.  Indian society is very conservative, they explained, and men seem to be getting more and more angry and violent.  We agreed that the shrinking of the global community and the fast and wide spread of news, coupled with the depth and breadth of technological communication (everyone has a cell phone) has informed India's lowest and rising middle classes  that the lot of the poor here is an anomaly in much of the western world.  Rich men commit violence against women too, they said,  but for both victim and perpetrator, violence against women seems to be more prevalent among the lower classes.  Moreover, fewer poor female victims ever receive the justice and protection guaranteed them by international human rights' laws.

Among the goals of the campaign was the establishment, in each country, of a "One-Stop Clinic" where a survivor of sexual violence can get all the services she needs under one roof, including psycho-social and medical treatment and a rape kit.  Education of the community of the needs of the victim and fast-track rape courts, also top the list of needed resources, among other things.

It was confirmed that DRIK's main office in Bangladesh intends to participate in the project as well, which would include workshops, conferences and a traveling multimedia exhibition as described in the previous post, entitled "Work and Nepal"  The campaign would be coordinated in the 3 neighboring countries of Nepal, India and Bangladesh and take place during the "16 Days of Activism" campaign scheduled globally from Nov. 25- Dec. 10,  2014.

While the campaigns of all three countries will be quite similar, each campaign will be custom-tailored to appeal to the differences in culture and community common to each country.

Each campaign will open with a conference that includes policymakers, survivors and advocates (the identities of all survivors will be kept hidden), and which will be purposely kept small and by invitation only.  Workshops in peace-building, reconciliation, conscious-raising and edcuation will be included in the kick-off, a multi-day event.

But in Nepal, for exanple, street theatre, which is hugely popular in a country with a very high illiteracy rate, will be the main traveling event.    In India, the ubiquitous 3-wheeler taxis, will sport poster-size signs listing resource numbers and other information for survivors of sexual violence, for which a permit would be required, a major hurdle in itself, involving lots of red tape.    All three countries will have traveling exhibitions that include life-sized photos of survivors, whose identifying features will be hidden, as well as the oftentimes very emotional oral testimony of those survivors describing their ordeals, including, in many instances, banishment by their families and communities post-rape.

The goal of each and every one of PROOF's campaigns is to empower survivors to direct their own destiny and to gain the confidence to advocate for themselves.  We were told, for example, that two Nepalese women broke their silence, with PROOF's help, and gave testimony.  They are now the Plaintiffs in the first international case soon to be filed in Geneva against Nepal, for violation of their internationally protected human rights.  Another woman, in India, we were told, was entitled to government money for a disability that included a useless right arm as a result of schrapnel.  Someone else had been taking her check.   Once she was able to break the self-imposed silence and give testimony to PROOF's parnters on the ground, the woman felt empowered to go to the bureaucracy and demand her entitlement.   She finally received it.

The afternoon was devoted to sightseeing.  Subhu, a photographer with DRIK and Nandita, who volunteers at a group home for vulnerable women, Leora, me and a driver squeezed into a 4-seater car and zipped around Kolkata at the speed of a snail, caught in the massive traffic chaos that is so common in India's large cities.  Beautiful but decaying and decayed colonial architecture was everywhere.   Formerly white-washed and columned buildings now sport a dusty and cracked, dirty sand color, with broken window shutters  hanging by a thread.  But the former glory of what once was the Britishers' (as the Indians call them) colonial gem could not be disguised by the dilapidation.

I specifically asked to visit Nahum's Bakery, a Kolkata landmark and Jewish bakery, which has been in the same family for 170 years.  Christian Hindus and others form long lines, particularly around Christmas, to buy its moist, fresh-baked-daily fruit cake.  There were once 30,000 Jewish families living in Kolkata.  Today there are only 20.   One of the two surviving brothers who jointly own the bakery explained that while the Jews of Kolkata were fairly treated, most of the community had left for Israel and points beyond.    He himself, over 80, lives in Jerusalem and just happened to visiting.  An Indian manager runs the place in his absence.

A nighttime boat ride on the Hooghly River, a drive-by of Mother Theresa's "hospital" and a quick look at Kolkata's beautiful railway terminal made us hungry.   But first we strolled the streets for awhile, smelling the curries, burning sandalwood and navigating the narrow, crowded sidewalks lined with vendors on both sides; pedestrians, dogs, and people rushing everywhere.  Sidewalk may be a misnomer.   The walkway had no curb, being flush with the street, and was lined on both sides of the narrow path with vendors lined shoulder to shoulder.  Clothes, toys, books, electronics, scarves, saris, just about every sellable item known to man, hanging from above.   The available space for pedestrians was just too small to hold the shopping and walking crowds.   We finally gave up the sidewalk for the road, like the Indians themselves, to brave the cows, rickshaws, cars, buses and hordes more pedestrians.  It was much faster, albeit a bit more dangerous, to move forward from the street rather than the sidewalk, but at least we progressed.  At one point, Leora was stopped by Subhu, our host from DRIK, from buying a book from a street vendor.   Many of the books sold on the street, he told us, are missing pages.  Sure enough we checked and found plenty of non-sequential page numbers.

We went to a local bar for a pre-dinner drink, waiting for the restaurant to open enjoying the clean, relatively quiet interior.   Dinner at the best restaurant in the city, came to only $36 for all of us!

By Day 3 of our journey here, I finally got the obvious idea to ask for a "doggie bag" so I could take our restaurant leftover away  and give them to people living on the street.   I am happy - very happy - to report, that my hunch that very, very few people in India are starving, was confirmed by our hosts and by a little experiment I conducted here in Kolkata.  After our dinner I looked for and found the skinniest, dirtiest, most wretched child I could find.   She was playing ball with some friends.   I gave our dinner's leftovers to her, which she grabbed, placed it down on the street where she was playing and continued with her game.  While many may be hungry and deprived of a healthy diet, very, very few are dying of hunger.  This is not to dismiss or diminish the miserable living conditions of the very poor who make less than $1000 per year, but I felt a bit less overwhelmed and guilty about passing the significant number of beggars looking for a handout.

Maybe I am becoming numb or desensitized to the poverty.   I pray that I am not.