The Rights Collective is a group of South Asian womxn who are looking to tackle the distinct and often subtle ways in which women’s disempowerment and inequality manifests within the Diaspora community in the UK - exploring both the public and private domains.
This type of disempowerment is often justified by our community itself, on the basis of historical socio-cultural and religious norms. Womxn are often in less powerful positions and certain other identities (such as caste and sexuality) are more likely to face violent forms of gender based discrimination.
At The Rights Collective, we believe it is our duty to dismantle and subvert some of these norms within our own spaces. We work to better understand how gendered experiences manifest for self identifying Hindu womxn (whether they are practicing religiously or identify with the cultural community) in the U.K. and how we can facilitate a shift towards equality.
We are interested in the implications of the identity of being culturally Hindu on the manifestation of gender based violence and will not generally be debating the philosophical ramifications of identifying as Hindu as part of our work.
We do not condone any sort of fascist or patriarchal beliefs or practises regardless of whether they are borne of religious beliefs.
Why is this needed?
Our collective and individual experiences have shown us how cultural practices, deeply embedded socio-cultural norms, and the ‘immigrant’ experience can negatively shape and uphold notions of what womxn should be. Added to this comes deeply ingrained stereotypes of what a South Asian womxn - especially a Hindu womxn should be and what she is expected to accept with regard to her right to determine the parameters of her life and reality.
We are cognizant of how external views of the community can be limiting in reaching the crux of the issues. Often, we see how perceptions of our communities can extend certain negative tropes. We see how ideas of ‘looking bad’ and “log kya kahenge” can be restrictive in opening up an honest dialogue.
We also understand that many issues relating to gender and women’s empowerment can become confined to private spaces, allowing them to fester within the community instead of being addressed.
As such, we wish to be an open space for our communities to address concerns using our own voice and language. We refuse to let our issues be hijacked by outsiders, many of whom may harbour alternative agendas. We seek to consider the following questions:
How do we break free of this negative cycle, provide space for change and address the issues that stem from gender inequality?
How can those who hold power in our communities themselves better support and elevate the voices of those who are marginalised?
How can we ensure that institutional structures respond in a more nuanced and informed way to the issues within our communities?
Why a ‘collective’?
We identify as a collective as we aim to be an inclusive space for communities in dismantling systemic factors that uphold women's oppression in the South Asian community.
We actively welcome South Asian non-Hindus who also experience similar discrimination and inequalities in their lives and hope to work together to address the commonalities of how these issues manifest across marginalised communities.
We are also mindful of the intersection of marginalisations that play out, even within the Hindu community. We seek to better grapple with and address how caste, language, regional differences and skin colour further compound the type of discrimination and disempowerment faced by women in our communities.
Finally, we are all too aware of how toxic masculinity is perpetuated and upheld within our communities in the demonisation of “others” and male bodies. In the future, we seek to invite male-identifying individuals into the collective too.
Our Story
The team at the Rights’ Collective is comprised of self-identifying South Asian womxn. We have all experienced gender based stereotyping, discrimination or violence in some form. We have also experienced the fact that very little seems to have been explored in connection to gender based discrimination and violence among the wider Hindu Diaspora community in the U.K. In addition to this, the clear failure of British support services to accommodate and support womxn from this community shows us that this conversation and subsequent actionable steps are a dire necessity.
We believe that the first step to tackling this issue is awareness and knowledge. This is why we have included a substantial research component to the early stages of our work - so that we are able to understand how womxn’s lives are affected by their gender identity in interaction with their other identities and the way their society perceives them.
What we do?
We aim to carry out our work through three distinct pathways which include:
Breaking the silence - focus on understanding what the issue is, encouraging people to talk about it more openly, building trust and relationships.
Cultivating a new culture - raising awareness, educating and changing the underlying socio-cultural norms that allow gender inequality to persist.
Co-creating spaces for support - bring together services that might support women in times of need.
