From earliest influences in the Emergency era, Prof. Rekha Pande evolved from diffident-dissident to championing the cause of humankind’s subdued 'second half'—women. From academic to activist and feminist, her 20 books and 150 articles exemplify endeavours at easing if not erasing centuries-old patriarchal stereotypes. A. Joseph Antony, her student at University of Hyderabad from where she retired recently, looks back on a life journey, where deeds outdid words, her methods at ending misogyny never being extreme but marked by reason and team work.
On Gandhi Jayanthi day in 1976, a car was heading for Varanasi on a three-day trip from Allahabad via Lucknow and Kanpur. A nervous 19-year-old was in awe of the frail woman seated beside her, clad in a blue-bordered white sari. “Do you have to become a nun in order to serve,” asked the curious teenager. “It’s not your religion, dress, qualification or place that’s important but your belief and interest in serving the downtrodden,” came the reply.
In later years, the elderly sister would become known as the ‘Saint of the gutters,’ while the admiring youngster would chair the 2014 Women’s World Congress.
When parting, Mother Teresa told Rekha Tewari, “Never forget the best service is love for the poor, the downtrodden and the neglected.”
Born in Malukhan village of Uttarakhand’s Ranikhet district, Rekha questioned why boys repaired fans and switches, while girls were restricted to stitching during crafts hour in school. That she would not be the docile-as-a-doormat daughter- in-law and wanted financial independence, she made clear when her parents sought marriage alliances for her.
When quizzed about a post–marriage career for herself, Suresh Pande’s response floored her. “Well I do not think girls are commodities. I strongly believe that a girl has a life and every right to do what she wants.” The transition was easy.
The newly-weds were split apart in the first four years of their marriage. She pursued her doctorate at Allahabad University, while Suresh was a scientist with the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad. She joined the University of Hyderabad as a History lecturer, juggled teaching, driving 15 kms to work and bringing up three boisterous boys, two of them twins. The tasks were less tedious with the couple sharing household responsibilities. ‘Behind every successful man there is a woman’ would be turned on its head by her ever-supportive husband.
With 20 books and about 150 articles ahead of her, that would turn the spotlight on subjects as varied as cultural history, miniature paintings, representation of women in the Deccan, women and Bhakti movement, Devadasis and courtesans, Dr. Rekha had struck a different path.
With Mother Teresa
Following a University Grants Commission (UGC ) circular, a Women’s Studies Cell was started in the university. With a small grant spread over the year in 1991, it organised seminars on ‘Women and work,’ ‘Women and employment,’ ‘Problems of theory and method in women's studies,’ ‘Women and social change,’ ‘Women entrepreneurs: problems and perspectives’ and workshops on ‘Gender bias in curriculum’ and ‘Violence and women.’
The drive for a full-fledged department met with lukewarm response. One senior professor told Dr. Pande, “Women’s studies are like inter- caste marriages. They are desirable but people are not comfortable with them.”
If the response was cold on campus, next door in the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), her course on Religious and Cultural Heritage of India was welcomed with open arms.
As a young working mother, Dr. Pande was appalled by the treatment of her two-year-old son at a nearby crèche. Combining forces with another colleague, she exposed crippling shortcomings in the fledgling daycare centres that were popping up across Hyderabad. When the findings were published, they got a call from the Director, Department of Women and Child Welfare, Andhra Pradesh. After deliberations with government officials and some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), their effort bore fruit with a crèche being set up for children of construction workers.
Projects followed on child labour in the beedi (Indian mini-cigarette/cigar) industry and the anti-arrack/liquor movement, which took Dr. Pande across undivided AP. Other subjects taken up were women and globalisation, women in call centres and gender issues in the police force. With a dozen years behind it, the cell framed a multi-disciplinary course for final semester students of the schools of Social Sciences and Humanities centred round the premise that while sex is biologically assigned, gender roles are socially constructed.
To do things differently, the classroom seating arrangement was made circular in the early 90s, attempting to undo the primacy accorded to teachers while suggesting that students were equals in the learning process.
In the first year of its teaching, some women students received pornographic emails. They took out a procession in protest to the boys' hostels and the Vice-Chancellor’s office, seeking assurances that such things would not happen again. The women sent out a strong message – that they would fight misogyny when they face it.
Indigenising feminist theory, propounded in other parts of the world until then, was a challenge. When international students, bringing in foreign exchange, showed interest in women’s studies under the University Study India Program, the course gained greater acceptance. If she was dismissed lightly early in her career, recognition for her work did not take long in coming. Professor Pande became Editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (she is still on its International Advisory Council) and Foreign Policy Analysis. She is on the Editorial Board of Palgrave Communications, on the Editorial Review Board of the International Journal of Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric (IJSVR) and the Current Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities.
With Purandeswari Devi and Nandita Das
At home she was nominated to the National Resource Group of the Mahila Samkhya (Education for women’s equality) programme for 2003-05. She toured AP, Gujarat and Uttarakhand to take stock of its ground level implementation. Again named for 2006-08, Bihar, Jharkhand and UP came under her ambit.
The first novel scheme she embarked on was the Jhola Pustakalaya (The Bag Library). Women with books in their bags would visit villages and distribute them. After a set time frame of a fortnight or a month, they would be collected from the borrowers and handed out again but in the next village, thus forming a chain of readers. Nari Adalats (Women’s courts) were an even more resounding success. Cases, only from women, were admitted. They pertained to property, family disputes, mental, physical harassment by husbands, bigamy and desertion of wives. Such was the success of these courts with their speedy, efficient, and affordable access to justice, that the police also began approaching them!
Women also gathered news, edited, photocopied the contents and brought out weekly/ monthly village newsletters. Others, armed with tool kits, visited villages on cycles to repair hand pumps in the rural hinterlands.
As Director of Maulana Azad National Urdu University’s (MANUU) Centre for Women’s Studies between 2005-07, success was invigorating as much as helplessness humbling. With extremely limited resources, they could do little for HIV Positive women, who lost their husbands to AIDS, were thrown out by their families and abandoned by society.
That some of these destitute women turned tragedies into triumphs had lessons for them though. On a trip to the Old City of Hyderabad, they found a bright girl working along with her mother in the bangle industry. Education was a luxury while wages from parent and child were vital for the family’s survival itself. Prof. Pande persuaded her friend to film her story, resulting in the little one enrolling in class IV. Friends from Flying Elephants Films offered to fund her studies till class X. Sadly, in less than a year, the child’s father abandoned her mother and three siblings. Her mother promptly got the bright one married off!
If she had interacted with women at the grassroot level most of her life, opportunities came to rub shoulders with the high and mighty too. Prof. Pande was invited by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, when they visited Hyderabad in January 2002. The couple wanted to meet women working on social issues. Also in attendance was Chandrababu Naidu, then AP’s Chief Minister.
Looking back at an illustrious career, its highpoint was becoming Chairperson of the Women’s World Congress, held in Hyderabad from August 17 to 22, 2014, attended by a 1000 delegates from 35 countries. ‘Gender in a changing world,’ was the convention’s theme, attracting 750 abstracts and panels from across the globe. The conclave discussed gender and culture/law/ history/management/violence/digital divide/ globalisation. Workshops examined reproductive technologies, role of education in empowerment and trafficking of women among other topics. The symposium, with students, researchers, government officials, corporate honchos, NGOs, explored ways to establish a gender-just society.
Her book, ‘Journeys into women’s studies—crossing interdisciplinary boundaries’ (Palgrave Macmillan Press, UK) was released by no less than India’s ‘Missile Woman,’ Tessy Thomas and University of Hyderabad Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy.
Other feathers in her cap include being made a member of the Feminist Jurisprudence Committee, National Commission for Women and Core Advisory Group for sensitisation and capacity building towards eliminating child labour. She was also nominated as Peace Ambassador for the South Asia region by the International Women’s Peace Group, South Korea in 2016.
A. Joseph Antony is an author, journalist, commentator and lecturer. His book, My way--the biography of M.L. Jaisimha (Apple Books, Amazon, Kindle), is among cricket's 30 bestsellers of all time, as featured by Forbes and CNN.