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Many identities

Krishna Ahooja-Patel of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was in the city recently

QUESTIONING NORMS Krishna Ahooja-Patel

In this era of globalisation where national and cultural identities are in a crisis, Krishna Ahooja-Patel draws our attention with the comment, "We are not recognising the multi-identity of a human being. The many dimensions to a human being are now more complex and we refuse to see it." What she has to say acquires relevance, coming as it does with 28 years of experience with the United Nations (U.N.), working in various capacities in the International Labour Organization, the U.N. Institute of Research and Training for the Advancement of Women, and the Women's World Summit.

For the Amritsar-born Krishna, her first brush with identity came when as a school girl, she heard the `Quit India' speech by Gandhiji at Gowalia Tank Maidan, Mumbai in August 1942.

A barrister-at-law from the Inner Temple, London, she moved to Geneva when she joined the U.N. in 1962.

Woman and identity

"I believe identity begins with the personal, and then to the national and an international identity. But in all this, where does it leave the woman, is an important question we have to ask ourselves," she reminds.

Having lived in India and abroad, she is able to discern the subtle ways in which all societies discriminate against the woman and adds, "When I'm in India, I am able to explain how things are not all hunky dory for women on the other side of the globe. And I do put the spotlight on their status in the Asian countries when I address the women in the West."

Speaking of how the identity of the woman is negated in the Indian culture, Prof. Patel speaks of the custom of giving a woman a new name on marriage followed by many communities in our country, "Deep inside it meant erasing the earlier phase of her life. This sort of effacement was done to slaves also. Laws of effacement have always been the same everywhere, whatever be the race, colour, caste or creed."

Gender mainstreaming acquires importance considering the fact that she has been able to study from close quarters, the manner in which gender divides, ignores and overlooks the lesser half of the world's population. Of the 217 countries in the world, 191 are members of the United Nations, but the commonalities in the status of women are there for all to see. "No matter whether it is a rich country or a poor one, the common features are that women are poorer everywhere, they work mostly from their homes and are underpaid and unpaid, their sexuality is abused and her productivity remains unrecognised," explains Prof. Patel who now has focussed her energies on `Women and Peace.'

In 1995, she travelled with a "peace train" organized by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to the UN Women's Conference in Beijing. That was the starting point of her commitment to the WILPF, of which she was elected the first non-white president in 2001. Krishna has helped take forward the WILPF's many different agenda of peace education, women's rights, disarmament, strengthening the UN. Prof Ahooja-Patel says, "We have to eliminate racism and discrimination, and train women in conflict areas to be leaders and part of the peace process. We don't find it happening anywhere, be it Iraq, Kashmir or Serbia."

Peace has become elusive, she says. 9/11 has made terrorism a universal phenomenon, and the methods to check terrorism have become repressive. Involving women in the peace process and restoration of normalcy is imperative. While she works on these lines through the WILPF, Prof Krishna Ahooja-Patel is also teaching at the Gujarat Vidyapeeth in Ahmedabad established by Gandhiji. Now putting together her experiences in the forthcoming book `Development has a Woman's Face - Insights from within the UN', she adds, "At the end of it all remains the question: Why are women left out? Why?"

BHAWANI CHEERATH

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