Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 04:11:20 -0500
From: lizzy <lizzy-AT-flakeysol.com>
Subject: Re: **Bride burning and dowry death conference at


Maybe its because it's four in the morning - the only time is the wee
hours when I can send or receive messages here in Hurricaine ravaged
Florida Keys - but I don't know who wrote this message below. I would
like to know - is there any way women who don't live near enough to
attend the conference can help? Is there an address and name we can
write to, with our demands or requests that these practices against
women stop? (I prefer demands against outrageous behavior, but some
might chastise me, saying we must pussyfoot around, asking nicely
"Please don't burn women women any more" in order not to "turn the
patriarchy off".
Lizzy

third-world-women-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu wrote:
> 
> Now I am "invited"!
> ___________________
> 
> I just received a note from Dr. Michael Witzel, Sanskrit Professor at
> Harvard (and actually a non-right-wing person), asking me to attend the
> conference. Of course, this is AFTER I wrote him about the rather
> objectionable list of speakers and conference announcement already
> published. According to him, the conference is not going "right".
> 
> He says to me, "It is strange that the (Indian) Govt. seems a little
> interested now ... and that Maneka Gandhi will come..."
> 
> My own reading is, like I said before, the Indian right-wing government and
> BJP, the party in power (a party that synonymizes oppression on women)
> wants to seize this opportunity: co-opt this cause, and project itself as
> the savior of the suffering Indian women. Thakur, i.e., Mr. H. Thakur, the
> conference organizer, either yields to that pressure or hopes that their
> presence will put his so-far non-event conference on spotlight.  In any
> case, he or the other organizers do not understand the political game
> played by the Hindu supremacist Indian government and its far-reaching
> harmful effect on this issue as a whole.
> 
> I am not sure if I will make it to the conference though; if I do, I will
> carry a few copies of my book on RSS and BJP that just came out from Delhi.
> Or, more likely, I will send a few copies through some good friends of mine
> who might be participating. I think it would be important to display the
> book there because it has a chapter on the issues of South Asian women and
> a section on the subject of bride burning and dowry deaths. This might
> sound a little self-propagating, but believe me, I am not doing this to
> make a profit.
> 
> I want to send a special appeal to all on this list (specially those who
> live in Northeastern USA) to attend this conference. With OUR help,
> something good might actually happen and some poor women might be saved.