Gujral

“Phenji, please bring them some salwars…” a father at a relief camp asked Mrs. Gujral for help for his young daughters who had been assaulted in Kanpur. On November 1, 32 years ago, Mrs. Gujral was scheduled to hold an exhibition at IIT Kanpur, to sell woolens from her small home-based business. Now, instead, she began transferring all these packed clothes to the nearby camps for survivors. Thus began her leadership and organizing in the face of depravity. Watch this Kaur’s account challenges all gender stereotypes: describing women in the gangs of perpetrators; the dogged women victim-survivors; and the women who took it upon themselves to organized targeted and scared men. “I’ll face them, main karangi mukablaa!” she told her neighbors and learned to make petrol bombs from an acquaintance on the phone…She readied her neighborhood for self defense. Soon after, Mrs. Gujral helped compile evidence for the PUCL report from Kanpur. She was not named as a contributor, for safety reasons. Much later, she wrote her own book on November 1984.

Saluting our fierce defenders, our mothers, our living history!