The critical issue. Remembering Rajni Tilak

A week ago, a friend, Rajni Tilak, passed away. None of us who knew her thought Rajni would go so soon, or so suddenly. Like activists who believe in the cause they fight for, Rajni worked tirelessly, pushing herself, putting her health aside for the cause. It was one such small neglect that eventually killed her, leaving a huge void in the three political movements she held dear: the women’s movement, the anti-caste movement and the left movement.

About a month ago, Rajni visited our office, bearing a sheaf of papers from which she planned to cull out stories and histories of dalit women. She offered to translate these for us and turn them into books, a project that excited us greatly. There are few documents on the history of dalit women, and here was an activist from within the movement, also a dalit, offering to put these together.

Prior to this meeting, I had invited Rajni to speak to my students at Ashoka University where I teach feminism and the women’s movement. An important and contentious issue in the women’s movement, caste often does not get addressed or talked about in detail. I was keen that my students, almost all of them from privileged backgrounds, should at least begin to understand this issue. And what better way to do it than to get someone from within the movement.

So I asked Rajni to do the honours. I was not sure how the students would react to her, and my worry was more about them being insensitive to her than about the kind of speaker she was. Rajni did something that seldom fails, she simply told them her life story.

The story of living in poverty, being thrown off your land by the upper castes who claimed ownership of all assets, the story of a father who struggled with different jobs, a mother who remained unwell for many years, the story of her own fight to study, her involvement in the left movement, her disillusionment at the resilient patriarchies within it, and the story of her differences, and solidarities with what she called the mainstream of the feminist movement... all this was completely new to the students.

They listened, rapt. At the end of the class, they flocked to her, and settled down for another hour at her feet. I think it won’t be wrong to say that she opened a window that they were unaware of.

Barely a few days had passed since Rajni’s death when the dalit protests erupted across States. I have no doubt that all her friends must have thought, many times over, of how she would have been out there, in solidarity, and how she would have written, spoken, argued about the issues at stake.

Rajni’s maturity, her thoughtfulness, her tolerance towards the upper castes — people she also viewed as her oppressors — were so valuable to a movement that has created many important leaders, and although it’s a cliché to say it will be a loss, the cliché also has truth in it.

One of her biggest questions was: why is that the dalits, and indeed often women, infantilised in the way they are perceived? Why is it that they are not treated as mature, thinking human beings, as citizens with rights? I was powerfully reminded of this when the Supreme Court decided, in what I would call mistaken wisdom, to make changes to the Prevention of Atrocities Act in order to curtail its possible misuse by dalits. A similar logic was at work when the Court thought it fit to talk about changing 498A on the presumption that women were misusing it.

Had Rajni been around, she would have been in despair about what is happening, as many of us are. In some ways, I am almost glad she is not here to see the tragic waste of young people (of the nine dead, seven were dalits), and the loss of something as precious as the few gains that had been made under the Prevention of Atrocities Act.

There’s also a wake-up call here, for the simmering anger of a people constantly discriminated against in a country that prides itself on being the largest democracy in the world, will eventually find an outlet.

In conversations, Rajni often joked about the new generation of dalit activists, about how angry and confrontational they are. She considered these as the positives, because anger at your situation is the beginning of change. I wish she had been around so she could see the change happening, but I am sure that wherever she is, she’s cheering for it.

Urvashi Butalia

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

Mail: blink@thehindu.co.in

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