Anubhuti having an all womemn’s team – maximum of whom belong to Dalit, NT-DNT, minority religious groups, and with intersections of violence survivors, mental health survivors, disaster survivors, being single women, etc., it was most appropriate on the occasion of Women’s Day to make a deep dive into the ideology of intersectional feminism.. We all set out early in the morning for trekking in a beautiful spot in Badlapur in Thane District, and in this natural setting, we delved deeper and deeper into what we understand by feminism, its history, what this movement has made possible for us, its leaders and our very close personal and political connection with it.
Anti hate, anti violence, anti discrimination, love, belongingness, dignity, respect, esteem, ethics, values, freedom, management, leadership, way of life and of humanity… And many more such threads that tie us to our mothers, sisters, friends, our foremothers, leaders and icons of progressiveness, were articulated by the team working with Anubhuti as the unbroken movement that is feminism.
We realised that many of these feminist leaders we know of, and there are many more whom history fell short in recording, but who stay alive in the hearts and minds of countless masses in the form of stories, their art, their ideas, their struggles, the values they gave us, the freedoms they gifted us.
On international women’s day , we shared, discussed, learnt about all these in the lap of nature, closely feeling the deep connection of environment and environmental justice also with Feminism. The open natural spaces, the beauty unsullied by artificial definitions of what is beautiful, provided the perfect place to understand these concepts at an emotional and intellectual level..