From 2003-2011 I was engaged in a research project that took me back and forth to diverse parts of Gujarat, India.  These are some of my stories from those days.

I wish to free the rural women of India and take them to the Indian version of Amazonia – a world occupied by women, for women, of women.  The reason is simple: they are locked down beyond belief.  From birth they are seemingly prepared for marriage.  They work, then work some more, then work again without adequate compensation. They do everything inhumanly imaginable, in flip flops and a sari (not an apology, which I will offer them now but a flimsy piece of fabric that stretches beyond belief). 

Any man appears to have more rights than they do – frequently able to exert them directly. There is no divorce without major stigma; no jobs and no apartments for the husbandless.

What is the key or, rather, one of the keys to their freedom?  Well...  African American women.  As I came across different situations and heard different stories, at different points I kept thinking about different relatives as something of a mental experiment.  None of the schemes worked completely but it did provide some insights, albeit for a minute.

Option 1 – The Freedom Ride (from my Aunt Pat who often served as a delivery truck for the family taking anyone and anything to anybody):

The freedom ride would be a black bus with a huge flag held at 15-20 feet high so that it could be seen from a distance;
            
There would be no doors and the windows would be blackened;

It would always drive at the same speed to facilitate getting on or off; 

There would be no questions – any woman could just step on it and be brought to Indiamazonia

Problems:

How would folks find out?  Word of mouth wouldn’t work because if men found out they would either take out the bus or follow the bus and extract their property.

One could send a witch into a village who threatens all the men. After they leave there could be a meeting to tell the women what is up.  This is problematic as well because one informant takes down the whole idea.


Option 2 – Witchin Woman (My Aunt Annabelle – the closest to our geechee roots in south Carolina who with her multi-colored wigs, babble-speak, tribal markings otherwise known as makeup and individualized incantations to deliver death to ex-husbands, liquor by the bottle and magic numbers put fear into all of us)

This solution was simple: use witches to threaten abusive men, identified by women to local stringers at the well.

Problem:

It is not clear how new witches are brought into communities.  They all appear to be locally-developed and thus the only solution would be to turn them to the cause.


Option 3 – Micro-Mace (One of my aunt's on Mother’s side who gave out advice, weapons and training to all women in the family).

Similar to giving poor people access to credit, I thought that there could be some allocation of mace given to women at watering holes so that they could protect themselves

Problem:

Men might get a hold of them and use them on the women and each other


Option 4 – The Woman’s Protection Program (This one was inspired by Nana – my mother’s mother, who would take in anyone for a while and would lie left and right to keep them protected while in her care).

Essentially this would be an organization whose job it would be to extract oppressed women, relocate them to a new locale (like a city) and create a back-story that explained their legitimate departure.  They would provide a new identity card, new family history and a new village complete with a false history to provide cover.

Problem:

Almost regardless of location, single women are stigmatized and thus it is unclear if any legitimate excuse could be found.  An alternative would be to pair them with men who seek to escape oppression, creating a back story as well as separate living quarters for the couple.  

There has gotta be a better way.

From 2003-2011 I was engaged in a research project that took me back and forth to diverse parts of Gujarat, India.  These are some of my stories from those days.

We traveled far into the deepest recesses of Gujarat; far from Ahmedabad, the mega-city that it was.  Our journey took us to places where blacks (African Americans) had never been – at least not physically.  They were represented in some manner, through the television and radio - even the internet had not yet made it here yet.  Exactly which African Americans made it out there (i.e., were known to the locals) was the subject of the next story.  Interestingly, my presence resulted in a bizarre chain of events as we evidently had someone running between the villages announcing that … "Mike Tyson" is coming.

In the first village, I was asked if I was Mike Tyson (the boxer once known for knocking everyone out in 5 seconds but later known for biting a piece of Evander Hollyfield’s ear).  I said no.  My name is Chris.

In the second village, it was assumed that I was Mike Tyson and I was asked how my fighting career was going.  I said that I did not fight and repeated my name.  They did not buy it.  They just thought I was trying to be low key.

By the sixth village, I gave up the Chris business and played along and, asked to do something, I threw a jab and everyone smiled, cheering “Iron Mike, Iron Mike, Iron Mike.”  I wondered how they knew the phrase.  You are never quite sure what gets where or how.  Regardless, the crowd was happy; the former world champion had visited their village. 

At the tenth village, someone asked me if I would stop a local bully.  It was said that he looked like me.  I was a little scared and even a little tempted but I did not pursue the matter.  Although everyone around me seemed 4 foot 3, you never know what the Indian Iron Mike would look like or what he would do when challenged.  

At the thirteenth village, it was said that I bit the ears of my opponents when I fought.  I denied it and said that when I fight, I fight clean.  These were just rumors from those that feared me.

At the sixteenth village, it was thought that I just bit off people’s ears when I wanted to – in and out of the ring.  The children would not greet me and the older folks kept to themselves. 

Upon our arrival in the seventeenth village, we found that it was completely empty.  Having heard that Mike Tyson, the man-eater, was coming the villagers had vacated.  Realizing where this was going and that it could only get worse, we headed back to Ahmedabad.  



Note: I admit that the last village was not completely empty and that it was due to my presence.  There had been some local incident and people had moved to do something.

From 2003-2011 I was engaged in a research project that took me back and forth to diverse parts of Gujarat, India.  These are some of my stories from those days.

When learning about untouchability from those subject to it, I wondered how anyone knew what caste you were.  Everyone looked kind of broke – tattered clothing and skinny (inversion into the body, kate moss on crack, heroin and diet pills skinny).  The poor represented every hue you could possibly imagine: from Wesley Snipes to Yellowman and some even beyond that.  Only the tribals stood out because of the type of fabrics that they wore and tattoos that adorned their bodies.  Otherwise, though, everyone looked a like. 

Now, initially, I thought that maybe it was an acquired taste.  Put black folk from around the US in the same room and many would just conclude: they all black folk.  For someone who was aware and familiar, however, they would be able to tell urban from rural, north from south from west from Midwest.  The differences are subtle but you could get some of them.  I was told that this was not the case in India and I did not see it.

In answer to my question about how someone knew what caste you were from, I was told that people told you.  It was part of the introduction: my name is x from the bla bla bla in z.

Now, I immediately though that was crazy.  I mentioned that this was different from the states.  I was under the impression that if a black person during the early 1900s (the best comparison to the situation of the rural Dalit) could have gotten away with it, they would frequently try to "pass" – pretend to be someone that was not likely to get their ass kicked.  Why would you opt into oppression, I wondered.

The answer I received was simple: it would not occur to someone to say that they are something other than what they are.  This was because: 1) identities were much more strongly fixed in Indian culture – you are born and die into castes, 2) they acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with who we are but it is the system of oppression and repression that is in need of change. Now, I readily admit that this might just be a function of who I was interacting with. The commonality of the opinion was significant though.

While respecting the nobility of the latter position and difficulty of the first, I was still not able to get my head around this.  My own family (on my mother's side), was still divided on the color line – the lighter part of the klan (who had interestingly all achieved higher levels of education and income – as cops, exporters and teachers) were quite distinct from the darker skin part of the klan (who were laborers, domestics and prisoners).  I even noticed that the more education I got, the more invitations I started receiving from the lighter side.  This was until the great “Why do Niggers bite the hand the feeds them incident” set against Whitney Houston singing to the troops after the Gulf conflict – another story for another time.

The paradox was not lost on me.  One individual at DSK had come from another part of India.  In his home state he was an untouchable.  In that space/place he was subject to a wide variety of discriminatory activities as were his friends, family and neighbors.  In Gujarat though, his caste was not considered untouchable.  Here, he was above the fray, receiving a small degree of respect and access.  This was astounding to me thinking that in one locale one would be a nigger and in another they would be a regular civilian.  "Why would one ever go back home," I thought.  "Do you want to stay?  What are you going to do?"  I hit him with a barrage of questions, thinking about what my relatives would have done had they had the choice.  

To all of my inquiries he said: “on this point, I am very much perplexed.”  Every now and then he would elaborate.  “I wish to help change my situation at home,” he would sometimes say.  “I do like not feeling like I do not exist,” he would add another.  Always though, he would come back to “on this point, I am very much perplexed.”  

After about three weeks of hearing this, he asked me: “what do you think I should do?”  The question struck me.  I could either advance a revolution or stick him back in chains.  I should not interfere, I thought, like the prime directive used by those in Star Trek regarding the non-interference with diverse civilizations.  But he asked me.  I would be remiss if I did not tell him what I thought.  I asked for some time to think about it and after about two weeks I had something for him.

After some thought, I came to think of his question to me as something less of a question than a test.  I remembered where I was and who came to DSK.  The next time I saw him, I said that "it was not perplexing.  Of course, he had to return.  That said, he should come back to DSK when he could to remember what he was doing this for."  Upon hearing this, he smiled at me and said that he knew I would come to understand.  He then flipped the script on me and asked, "why African Americans did try to pass" - historically (we talked about more modern forms of passing as well but that is also for another time).  Why would they seemingly accept the legitimacy of the system and get by as an individual leaving the collective.  Immediately defensive, I started to respond.  How dare he diss the brothers and sisters that did the best they could. I caught myself though and reflected.  The only thing that came to mind was one phrase and I gave it to him with a bit of a grin: “on this point, I am very much perplexed.”  He smiled. As was frequently the case, we had some tea and then we left each other – off to our respective parts of the planet to comprehend, to reflect and of course to struggle. 

He never left me though. The idea of passing has come back to me repeatedly. What does it mean to be African American? What would passing look like?  What would not passing look like?  Who gets to validate blackness?  Is the time of passing over or has it just reached a new phase?  Hmmmmmmmmmm

From 2003-2011 I was engaged in a research project that took me back and forth to diverse parts of Gujarat, India.  These are some of my stories from those days.

There once were 4 girls from Mississippi.  Now, I know what you’re thinking but it ain’t them.  These girls were not really from Mississippi; they were visiting there and had just returned to Dalit Shakti Kendra (Dalit Power School - DSK), filming and exploring the similarities between racism in the US and untouchability in India.  These 4 girls were Indian, from Gujarat, outside of Ahmedabad to be exact.  Hell, they weren’t even girls.  They were all very much women – in all senses of the word, likely from an early age, India tends to do that. 

Regardless of origins or ages, the 4 were as fantastic as any image created by Marvel comics. The 4 were as different as the elements but when put together you had the components to make almost anything. They embodied the best that humanity had to offer, peppered with some of the worst.

For me, T (not her name) always comes first (the one on the far left in the photo).  She was the worker-bee of the group, first out the gate, first out the house, the plane or whatever was going on.  If it needed doing, she was ready and in all likelihood she had already done it, written a manual for others to follow and on to the next.  She was hungry like Whoopi Goldberg after she got away from Danny Glover in the Color Purple.  For her, life was an oyster and she had just pulled up to the free buffet of life.  T would later manage our 1589 village census, essentially by herself, navigating around her own ambition, inabilities, neglect, familial obligations as well as others expectations and sexist preferences for male involvement. 

N (not her name) was the elder of the group and the soulful one (third from the left above).  You could tell from her face that something horrible had happened to her but that she lived through it – barely.  All of the single women at the school had stories of abuse, abandonment, fear, persecution and/or death. N was responsible for teaching individuals at the DSK how to make clothes.  That someone with such a dark cloud over them was associated with some of the brightest colors that you could possibly imagine, died into the cloth in a slow process, was constantly paradoxical.  Perhaps the light that was incorporated into the fabric represented the light that she wished to bring forward into the world.  Perhaps the darkness that surrounded the splashes of color was the best that she could do to counteract what had happened to her. 

R (not her name, first on the right) was the firebrand of the group.  She had gone to Mississippi over the objections of her then husband (M).  He was to blame though.  M worked at DSK and began a project with video-taping the activities of the group as they challenged untouchability as well as the activities in the school.  At night, he would bring the camera home.  He would not let R touch it, saying that it was very expensive as well as delicate.  Nightly, however, she would see it in the house and every now and then she would sneak out of bed and begin to play with it.  This became an obsession of hers and after waiting for quite a while she approached the leaders of DSK, expressed an interest in learning about film and then the opportunity to come to the states had arose.  M threw a fit but in the context of a progressive social movement to uplift the Dalit as well as a strong commitment from the leaders of the organization to fight sexist practices as well as caste discrimination, his position was not supported.  R went to the American south, she learned many aspects of film-making (quickly surpassing M and getting an offer from National Geographic for a small project) but under the strain of the interaction as well as M’s ambitions, she got divorced, left the school with her lovely newborn and attempted to find her way.  M was in Canada but is now back in Gujarat.

Finally, there was Z (second from the left) – the heart and voice of the group.  Now, Z is one of those people that defies description. She, like the others, had a light and like N you knew that there is some pain in her past.  But, the way she has moved beyond it is as uplifting a presence as you can imagine.  I was actually introduced to Z through her voice and strangely I was reintroduced to African American history by the experience. 

At Martin Macwan’s invitation, she sang “We shall overcome.”  Now, I had heard the song a million times before but somehow her version brought me back to it, through it and beyond it.  With the different points of emphasis, different accent and rawness of the presentation, I began to feel the resonance of the song and of the African American struggle.  Sitting in a courtyard in the middle of some Indian village, I listened to the words and felt renewed.  The struggle was here, I thought.  Our struggle was here.  It continued.  It grew.  They had heard us – all the way over here, felt solace and moved accordingly.  Our presence was much needed.  Gandhi and his non-violent movement was not their inspiration, King and his movement was.  Gandhi represented Hinduism and betrayal; King represented the oppressed who struggled, righteously and with little contradiction.  Mississippi in Ahmedabad. African Americans were kindred to the Dalit – they who believe and practice equality.  African Americans were fellow travelers – in the old sense of the word.  As we attempted to overcome, so would they.  As we attempted change, so would they.  As we attempted, so would they.  Hopefully they would do better.

Reflecting about my sense of failure regarding the African American struggle in general and the civil rights movement in particular, I heard the song of my liberation for the first time and realized that my metric for success was deficient.  Mos Def had it right: the invisible man got the whole world watching.  This time though 4 girls from Mississippi showed the light – yet again.