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Gender rights activist and playwright Eve Ensler on Friday said India is a completely different place than it was a year ago. She was in the Capital to speak on ‘Global and Local Linkages’ at an event ‘Visions of Gender Justice: Mobilising Resources’, organised by the Oak Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
“Last year the Nirbhaya case acted as a catalyst for an uprising. India has big power in the world, it has a sort of centrality. I was travelling across the world and people were feeling the wave of India ripple through the planet. If India moves, the whole world can move. Whether we move a step backwards on Section 377 or not, India is moving. It is a completely different place than it was a year ago. A year ago, Tarun Tejpal would not have come to light in two days. You would not have seen people come on to a TV show to talk about a progressive Editor-in-Chief doing that,” she said.
The founder of V-Day: A Global Movement for Ending Violence against Women and Girls, Ensler, spearheads the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign which has become a mass movement. The campaign had its first innings last year in February across 207 countries, where one billion people came forward to strike, dance and raise awareness to end violence against women and children.
On the impact of the campaign, Ensler said, “We are going to prepare an outcome report of the campaign. Because this campaign was about dancing, it did not cost anything. People joined in ways they could never join before. It is interesting how that has transferred to real solidarity a year later.”
Intersectional relationships began to develop through building this campaign, she added.
“People who did not have violence against women as their primary focus, but as their secondary issue, also joined the movement. This escalated our efforts to become a much deeper movement. Also, when women see themselves in the context of global sisterhood, they are not only energised but their struggles too are legitimised and they are protected,” she said.
Ensler’s works include ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ a play translated into 48 languages and performed in 140 countries.
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