SPECIAL FEATURE

by Nina Somera

In this interview, one of the leading feminists from the South, Kamla Bhasin shared her thoughts about fundamentalisms, United States’ intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan and its impact on women, the United Nations, the World Social Forum, feminism and much more.

“Christian fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism and Muslim fundamentalism are all brothers in arms and they all conspire to keep women down. I also believe that all these modern religions are patriarchal in nature.”Kamla Bhasin shares. “I also think that capitalism plays a role. Some people make money through particular forms of behaviour. Women are seen as the last colony when all the other political colonies have been freed. Her body, her labour power are exploited both by families and religions.”

As a Southern and socialist feminist, whose major concern is the global economic system and the global economic paradigm, Bhasin criticised the present form of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation which are really based on unlimited greed. “Yet we have the technology and knowledge to create alternatives but the short term interests of a few people are destroying the long-term interests primarily of mother nature, the ecology and poor people...Connected to this paradigm of power and profit is democracy. We don’t care about other people’s rules. We have created organisations like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which are dominated by the rich and powerful countries.”

Bhasin believes, “The concept of a United Nations (UN) is totally necessary. But the UN can only be as good and democratic as our countries are. The UN can only reflect the wisdom, democracy, and peace of our countries and if we have to change the UN, we have to change every organisation within our countries.”

In assessing the World Social Forum (WSF) as a space and its articulation of feminist visions, she encourages that feminists need to do much more work at all levels to have gender equality everywhere, so that the global network like WSF would reflect the feminist thoughts and agenda.

This interview is one of the articles featured in Women in Action magazine issue, “Multiple Intolerance, Mounting Resistance”.