The purpose of “Half the Sky – Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”, by Pulitzer Prize Winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is pretty much self-evident from the subtitle. The authors say in the introduction to
their book that their primary areas of emphasis are: sex trafficking and the forced prostitution that accompanies it; gender-based violence against women; and maternal mortality (mortality associated with pregnancy or childbirth).
The United Nations’ International Labour Organization estimates that there are currently about
12.3 million people in the world performing forced labor, including prostitution. Kristoff and WuDunn estimate conservatively that there are at least 3 million women and girls (and a very small number of boys) who could accurately be termed “enslaved in the sex trade” – and numbers have been increasing in recent decades. It can be very difficult to make accurate estimates on these kinds of things, because of their illegal status and because there can be a very fine line between forced and “voluntary” prostitution. The 3 million “enslaved” women and girls refer mostly to those who are kept locked up. In addition, there are many more who are manipulated or intimidated into working for sex, including those who owe their bosses so much money (for “travel expense”, for example) at such high interest rates that they will essentially be forced to work for them until they die. And then there are millions more who are under the age of 18, whose “consent” to work in the sex trade is pretty much morally and legally meaningless.
Education is key to the solution. Uneducated women and girls tend to be much more docile than educated women and girls, because there are many cultures throughout the world that
teach them to be docile from the time that they’re born. Formal education can undo that teaching. Sex traffickers greatly prefer to deal with uneducated, docile women and girls, because educated women tend to have the capability, confidence and motivation to make great trouble for them.
In showing how women and girls are abused, Kristoff and WeDunn present a lot of individual examples, based on their research and interviews with the victims. In a section of the book titled “Learning to Speak Up”, they tell the story that is the subject of this post. It is a story of the terrorization of a low class neighborhood in India by a group of thugs, how the women of that neighborhood developed the courage to fight back, and what they did with that courage.
Terror in Kasturba NagarKasturba Nagar is a slum neighborhood in India, composed almost entirely of the lowest caste of Indians, who are referred to as Dalits – Untouchables. The authors describe how a higher-caste man, Akku Yadav, with the help of his “gang of hoodlums”, terrorized the neighborhood for 15 years. They robbed for profit, and they raped, tortured and occasionally murdered in order to keep the population intimidated. Dalits who complained to the police about these things would often be arrested for complaining. The authors give many examples of the terror in the neighborhood. Here is an excerpt:
According to neighbors in the slum, Akku Yadav… took one woman … and tortured her in front of her daughter and several neighbors by cutting off her breasts. Then he sliced her into pieces on the street. One of the neighbors… planned to go to the police, so Akku Yadav butchered him as well… The more barbaric the behavior, the more the population was cowed into acquiescence. Twenty-five families moved away from Kasturba Nagar, but most had no choice. They adjusted by pulling their daughters out of school and keeping them locked up inside their homes.
Developing the courage to fight backThere was one family that was different. The Narayane family considered education to be very important. In a neighborhood where no other person had ever gone to college, the parents saved up money to educate their children, and all five of them graduated from college. Akku Yadav wisely never bothered that family. One of the daughters, Usha, with her university degree managed to move away from Kasturba Nagar, and one day she came back for a visit.
When Akku Yadav raped a 13 year old girl and threatened to kill the Narayane family’s neighbors, Usha went to the police to file a complaint. But all the police did was inform Akku Yadav of Usha’s actions, thus enraging him. The authors describe what Akku Yadav did next:
He (Akku Yadav) and forty of this thugs showed up at the Narayane house and surrounded it. Akku Yadav carried a bottle of acid and shouted through the door “You withdraw the complaint and I won’t harm you”.
Usha barricaded the door and shouted back that she would never give in. Then she frantically telephoned the police. They said that they would come, but they never did. Meanwhile, Akku Yadav was pounding on the door: “I’ll throw acid on your face… If we ever meet you, you don’t know what we’ll do to you. Gang rape is nothing. You can’t imagine what we’ll do to you”…
He and his men tried to batter the door down. So Usha turned on the cylinder of gas the family used for cooking and grabbed a match: “If you break into the house, I’ll light the match and blow us all up”, she shouted wildly. The thugs could smell the gas, and they hesitated. “Back off, or you’ll ge blown up”, Usha shouted again. The attackers stepped back.
The Dalits fight backWord of the confrontation spread, and neighbors gathered around to watch:
When they saw Usha fighting back… finally forcing the gang to retreat, they found courage. Soon there were a hundred angry Dalits on the street, and they began picking up sticks and stones. “People realized that if he could do this to Usha, there was just no hope”, one neighbor explained. Stones began to fly toward Akku Yadav’s men, who saw the ugly mood and fled. The mood in the slum became giddy. For the first time, the people had won a confrontation. The Dalits marched through the slum, celebrating. Then they went down the street to Akku Yadav’s house and burned it to the ground.
Akku Yadav went to the police, and they arrested him for his own protection. A bail hearing was set. Having no confidence in the legal system after experiencing it for so many years, hundreds of women marched to the courtroom for the hearing, where they found seats. Akku Yadav strutted in, mocking one of the women he had previously raped by shouting at her that he would rape her again. Then, the woman he shouted at:
rushed forward and hit him on the head with a slipper. “This time, either I will kill you, or you will kill me”, she shrieked. At that, the dam burst, apparently by prearrangement. All the women from Kasturba Nagar pressed forward and surrounded Akku Yadav, screaming and shouting. Some threw chili powder in the faces of Akku Yadav and the two police officers guarding him. The police, blinded and overwhelmed, fled at once. Then the women pulled knives from their clothing and began stabbing Akku Yadav.
“Forgive me”, he shouted, in terror now. “Forgive me! I won’t do it again.” The women passed their knives around and kept stabbing him. Each woman had agreed to stab him at least once. Then… the women hacked off Akku Yadav’s penis… By the end, he was mincemeat…
The bloodied women marched triumphantly back to Kasturba Nagar to tell their husbands and fathers that they had destroyed the monster. The slum erupted in celebration… The festivities resembled a giant wedding.
The police arrested Usha as the suspected mastermind behind the plot. But the incident focused public attention on the plight of the Dalits. A retired high court judge publicly sided with the women, saying “In the circumstances they underwent, they were left with no alternative but to finish Akku. The women repeatedly pleaded with the police for their security. But the police failed to protect them.”
To protect Usha, hundreds of women from Kasturba Nagar took responsibility for the killing. Under intense pressure, the police released Usha after two weeks.
Thoughts on the killing of Akku YadavI found this story highly inspiring, and even heart warming. So I had to ask myself, as someone who doesn’t believe in vigilante justice or the death penalty, and who hates to
watch violence of any kind, how could I feel like that?
My answer is that these women were in a situation of war – through no choice of their own. Their actions were a matter of self defense in the course of war. Vigilante justice is a very bad thing in places where the rule of law exists as an alternative. But there was little or no rule of law in Kasturba Nagar. In such a place, the choices are not between vigilante justice and the rule of law. The choices are between vigilante justice and no justice at all. In other words, the choices are between vigilante justice and submission to tyranny of the worst kind. Their actions were a matter of self defense. In my opinion those actions were every bit as justifiable as those of the leaders of the American Revolutionary War or the German Army officers who plotted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler (and paid for that attempt with their lives).
But did their killing have to be so brutal? I believe it did. If a lone assassin had shot Akku Yadav in the head, others would probably arise to take his place and continue the terror. But the manner of the killing was such that Akku Yadav’s thugs would think long and hard before making the decision to take his place.
Though I believe that the majority of my country’s wars have
not been justifiable, I am not a pacifist. I believe in the principles of war
enunciated by the United Nations – that it is justifiable only in cases of self-defense, or to stop certain types of catastrophes, such as genocide.
This is not just an academic question. Millions of women throughout the world are abused or terrorized to the extent that their lives are a living hell. This demands a solution. Kristof and WuDunn feel much the same way about it as I do. They comment at the end of the chapter that I just described:
The saga of Kasturba Nagar is unsettling, with no easy moral. After years of watching women quietly accept abuse, it is cathartic to see someone like Usha lead a countercharge – even if we’re uncomfortable with the bloody denouement and cannot condone murder. Empowerment… is truly what is needed. The first step toward greater justice is to transform that culture of female docility and subservience, so that women themselves become more assertive and demanding… When a woman does stand up, it’s imperative that outsiders champion her; we also must nurture institutions to protect such people. Sometimes we may even need to provide asylum for those whose lives are in danger. More broadly, the single most important way to encourage women and girls to stand up for their rights is education, and we can do far more to promote universal education in poor countries.
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