Excerpts from the Speech of The Honorable Rita Bahuguna Joshi

I am really honored that with the blessings of Guruji I have been able to attend this very prestigious conference of women and before I start or pick up the issues of women; I would like to thank Guruji for bringing peace and harmony in his own way not to thousands but millions of people across the world. Guruji is not only a spiritual leader because India excels in spiritualism. Our culture is based on spiritual values and Guruji I would say embodies the ethos of Indian thought and that ethos of Indian thought is - it’s universal, universalism in religion. It is belongingness with the entire world, with all the humanity. 

You know one of the oldest scriptures of our nation, known as the Atharva Veda, which guides the Hindu philosophy or way of life says and I will quote “Mata bhoomi putro aham prithviyaa”. The whole world is our motherland and we are children of the earth and that is why sixty nations are represented in this hall, in this auditorium. We are in our own ways empowered – we are in our own ways representing different sections of the society; we have in our own ways some how crossed hurdles to reach where we are today – maybe family support, maybe our own inspiration, maybe our own tenacity.

I would say the first point of connectivity is that we are all women and that connects us. Our sensitivity connects us and the tenacity connects us. We are tenacious. We know how to face situations. And therefore today when we all sit here in this great hall of spiritual values, I was just thinking there are not one but I must have attended but scores of conferences internationally; nationally as well but the ambience of this ashram transcends them all and here we are with a sense of spirituality. We are not here as politicians, we are not here as social activists, we are here to really concentrate and design ways and paths by which we could help Guruji in bringing out harmony and peace in the world.

Now, we know that we have come a long way; I am not a pessimist, I am a stark optimist.The women’s movement and the women’s empowerment has come a long way. We have gained civil rights. We have also gained a lot of opening in various fields today whether it is the economy or polity or society. We are playing our roles but not in the capacity and not in the numbers in which we populate this world. We are 50% of the population of the world and for women now, the sky is the limit. We don’t want to be now constrained by any such orders, which are retrogressive; orders, which are against human rights, orders which restrict us to certain stereotype roles. We are human beings and therefore as Swami Vivekananda said when he went to USA, “brothers and sisters of USA, brothers and sisters of the world.” He said that “soul has no sex and if one distinguishes between that then they cannot attain the spirit.” So if you are looking for spirituality if you want the soul to interact with God then you have to dissolve all distinctions and he says sex has no distinction.

So all our philosophers, all our religions whether it is Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, they give equal status to women in their religious scriptures; so why are we not being able to avail of them now? Why is a young girl who wants to study in my neighbouring country of Pakistan killed? I hear that women’s rights are going to be drastically curtailed in Afghanistan? We see that in my own continent of India, of South Asia; women are living in abject poverty, they are not getting proper education, they are subjected to evils of the society like female foeticide, dowry deaths, infantile marriages. And majority of the women are subjected to violence; domestic violence, violence in the streets. There is lots more to be done, we have to gain up on strength see that if there is no peace, there can be no harmony, if 50% of the population feels insecure, if they feel left out. That is why there will be harmony only when we all get together into the activities of nation building, into the activities of society building and Guruji has very kindly given that space to women in his organisation.

So I would say that until there is discrimination, hunger, disease, violence, famine, there is conflict and armed conflict women are going to suffer. 70% of the world’s poorest are women, we know this – these are statistics that come down to us and very shamefully and very regretfully I would like to say that in South Asia, 70 to 80% women are subjected to domestic violence at least once in their lives. They are being subjected to domestic violence, they don’t report it. I just got some details that 2 million women from USA were subjected to domestic violence in 2010. Whether it is rape, molestation,violation of women’s modesty, harassment at work place or whether it is child abuse, every where woman is the first and the worst victim of all these crimes; so we have to stand up. We have to collectively fight for against these evils.

The Indian story is not so bad it’s pretty good. India has given to it’s women equal rights in its constitution, we have given them reservation in local governments and I would say 1.5 million women, in this country, are holding elected positions in the local bodies – that would be the population of a small nation. Education for women is free. Then how, why is it that women education is not progressing at the pace that it should? Because the governments of nation are not implementing provisions that have been made for the girl child education.

In India women were not supposed to perform religious duties like the puja and the karm kand rites. When a person dies a series of rituals have to be followed. Women were beyond this domain but then there was one woman in Pune, who created an organization known as Pragati Manjusha and she started training women into these fields and you will be surprised to know not in thousands but in lakhs now women have done these courses and they are doing all the pujas and all the ceremonies that were denied to them say about 50 years back. We have women organizations who are running transportation systems. The Trishul in Kerala, is totally a woman’s organization which is running inter city road transport. We have Sewa, the banking system which was introduced in India by Ila Bhatt and one hundred thousand women are members of that cooperative bank and the bank is flourishing. The White revolution that was brought out by Indira Gandhi that has now brought together collectives of women that are earning very well by selling milk to the cooperative society. We have self help groups –the Self help groups have transformed the life of the women in Andhra and economically strengthened them.

So it’s not that nothing is moving but the pace is slow and this pace has to be accelerated and I am sure that with Guruji’s blessings the way..over 40-45000 children are being educated free of cost by the ashram.

Courses have been introduced for various sections of the people but I would like you to please introduce an orientation camp for men to change the male psyche. What we need at the moment is to change the mind set of men. What we really require is to re-orient the men and tell them that we are human beings and to tell them that if are weak in body we are very resolute in mind. Please tell them that God has created all as equals. Every scripture says that, every philosophy says that, please tell them to respect our human rights and with this I end my presentation. I am sure that all of us from here, we are vibant women, we are strong women, we are committed women Let us all collectively make the world more cohesive, more beautiful, more liveable. Thank you so much.

Sound Bites

• We are in our own ways empowered - we are in our own ways representing different sections of the society; we have in our own ways crossed hurdles to reach where we are today.