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'Black' woman's tale drives Nepal rights campaign
2010-03-10 11:20:00
Dark, untouchable and a slave, yet Kali is the heroine of a campaign
to protect the rights of the disadvantaged communities of Nepal,
especially women.
She is the central character in a street play, 'Kali Aimai, the black
woman, which has been sponsored by the UN to tour Nepal's remote
districts to campaign against violence targeting women, exploitation
and untouchability, and to train local artists to spread the message
farther.
'While working in the far west, we found rampant economic, social and
cultural discrimination,
UN human rights office in Nepal that is sponsoring the theatre
campaign against discrimination.
'There was a complete sense of resignation: people accepted their
fates as their kismet. The complete culture of impunity in the legal
framework contributed to it.'
Though the government has abolished the 'haliya' system - the practice
of slavery that sees a family working for an employer without payment
all their lives - it still flourishes in Nepal. So does untouchability
and a form of violence particularly targeting women from poor
families. This is the 'bokshi' phenomenon in which villagers accuse
any woman they dislike of being a witch who has caused either deaths
or misfortune to them. The accused is forced to eat human excreta and
at times beaten to death or set ablaze.
The UN agency started its campaign with a comic strip to teach victims
and their families how to make a police complaint. It was followed up
with a TV campaign in partnership with the Prime Minister's Office.
However, the message did not reach rural Nepal, where there is no
electricity, literacy, running water or even motorable roads. So
Actors' Studio, a maverick theatre company in Kathmandu, was asked to
stage street plays in remote areas.
Performed at market places, bus stations and village meeting points,
Kali Aimai is the tale of a director who coaches the villagers to
perform his play after his actors fail to arrive due to a general
strike.
The plot is about a landlord trying to avenge himself on his slave,
Harka, and the latter's wife Kali, after they refuse to work for him
without wages. He accuses Kali of being a witch who tried to kill his
wife and villagers humiliate Kali on his orders.
However, the villagers roped in as actors revolt against the story and
force the director to change his play so that it ends with the
landlord and his henchmen being arrested by police.
While performing the play in different villages, the actors injected
local dialects and tales told by the audience to make it seem like
their own story.
'Women often cried during the performance and asked us to include
their plight during menstruation, when they are confined to a cowshed
and not allowed to enter their own houses,' said Tanuja Basnet, a
researcher with the project.
'They told us even government schools did not allow menstruating women
teachers to take classes.'
The cast includes actors from communities that are still regarded as
untouchables.
Crew member Hira Bijuli Nepali, a 20-year-old from Mugu district,
belongs to the Dalit community whose members are still not allowed to
enter temples or use the same water tap in a village.
Nepali says he is in the play as an 'investment' for his Dalit
brothers. 'I want to take to remote places the message that the times
have changed,' he says.
'People also need to change.'
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.
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