Kavita Krishnan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Secretary of theAll India Progressive Women's Association | |
| In office 2017–2022 | |
| Politburo Member ofCPIML Liberation | |
| In office 2016–2022 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kavita Krishnan 1973 (age 52–53)[1] |
| Party | Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation |
| Education | University of Mumbai Jawaharlal Nehru University |
| Occupation | Politician Human Rights Activist |
Kavita Krishnan is awomen's rights activist who has publicised the problem of violence against women following the2012 Delhi gang rape ofNirbhaya.[2]
Krishnan was also a politburo member of theCommunist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation and had been a member of its Central Committee for over two decades. She was also the editor ofCPI (M-L) Liberation's monthly publication,Liberation[3] and the Secretary of theAIPWA.[4] She quit CPI (ML) Liberation in 2022.[5]
Kavita Krishnan was born to Tamil parents inCoonoor,Tamil Nadu. She grew up in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh.[1] Her father worked as an engineer at a steel plant while her mother taught English. She completed her BA fromSt. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Krishnan received anMPhil in English Literature atJawaharlal Nehru University.[citation needed]
Kavita Krishnan became part of a theater group led byArun Ferreira inSt. Xavier's College, Mumbai (affiliated college ofUniversity of Mumbai) and she would participate in street plays and protests. Her serious stint with political activism took place when she joined theJawaharlal Nehru University where she earned her master's degree and was elected Joint Secretary of the Students' Union in 1995. She was a member of theAll India Students Association while she studied in JNU.[6] She became seriously involved with activism when she met the student leaderChandrashekhar Prasad who was also a student at JNU and a member of AISA. Fondly remembered as Chandu by the students of JNU even today, Chandrashekhar was murdered along with fellow CPI(ML) leader Shyam Narayan Yadav on 31 March 1997 inSiwan, Bihar while addressing a street meeting. Kavita Krishnan's life as an activist took a serious turn after this incident. Chandrashekhar, who had been the President of the JNU Students' Union the year before Krishnan was elected the Joint Secretary, was the first to recognise her passion and to suggest her to work full-time for women's rights.[7] Following Chandu's murder, thousands of JNU students participated in mass demonstrations, demanding action against formerRashtriya Janata Dal parliamentarianMohammad Shahabuddin, whose men, they alleged, had carried out the attack.[8] Krishnan was part of the protests in Delhi, where the student protesters were attacked byLaloo Yadav's men at Bihar Bhawan.[9] She spent eight days in jail for her participation in the protests.[10][11]
While emerging as one of the most influential activists[12] during the massive anti-rape protests that followed the rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl inIndia's capital city,New Delhi, Kavita Krishnan has contributed substantially to shaping the discourse of the movement. One of the speeches that she made at the protest outside Delhi Chief MinisterSheila Dikshit's house quickly went viral on YouTube[13] and has received over 60,000 views so far. In this speech, she laid out a kind of manifesto of the movement, one that represented a major break from the securitised, protectionist standpoint which was rife at that time and articulated women's freedom as the main demand.[14][15] In this speech, she argued against the prevalent commonsense that death penalty was the solution to rape. She pointed out that the conviction rates for rape in India are extremely low and, therefore, methods such as chemical castration and death penalty can't act as deterrents. She made a strong case for arguing on the basis of women's "unqualified freedom", "freedom without fear". Her views on death penalty have been influential in shaping the discourse around rape in the aftermath of the post 16 December anti-rape protests.[16][17][18] The demand for "Freedom Without Fear" became a rallying point for anti-rape protesters, and Kavita Krishnan's views on "Freedom" were extensively published.[19][20][21][22][23]
On2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, Krishnan made a premature claim on Twitter, suggesting that the attack was an act of "majoritarian terror against religious minorities."[24] Khemta H Jose ofThe Quint wrote, "Kavita Krishnan, an Indian icon of the left, jumped to blame Sri Lanka's 'majority' (Sinhalese) for the Colombo bombings, before any investigation was completed – it's just one small example of the difference in the way the left deals with terror or extremism based on the identity of the perpetrator."[25]
She had told reporters,
“These trolls … they are going after me regularly, routinely, for my skin color, for my looks, telling me I’m not worth raping, what kind of torture and rape I should be subjected to, telling me what kind of men I should be sleeping with … and on and on and on, more and more.”[26]
Through a Facebook post on 1 September 2022, Krishnan announced that theCPI (M-L) Liberation has relieved her of all party posts and responsibilities at her request; however, she will continue to remain a member of the party. This is being seen as a fallout of her differences with the leadership on various issues including those related to China and the Russo-Ukrainian War. In the preceding months, she had often criticised socialist and communist regimes.[5][27]
She wrote in a social media post,
“My friends on the Indian Left… could never reconcile to the fact that the peoples of USSR and especially its colonized Republics, chose not to retain the Soviet Union and that Gorbachev at the end of the day respected that choice instead of ‘imposing socialism by bayonets’ on people who had rejected it,… It is not enough to discuss the Stalin regime, USSR, or China as failed socialisms but as some of the world’s worst authoritarianisms that serve as a model for authoritarian regimes everywhere.”[28]
Fearless Freedom by Kavita Krishnan was published in May 2020.
A more popular reception ofFearless Freedom was done by Women's Web, a popular Indian blogpost which celebrates women's voices. Author Piyusha Vir talks about howFearless Freedom acknowledges that,‘Confinement to the home itself is a form of violence that is not even acknowledged.’[29] and how that acknowledgement came as a "rude reality check" for her. This reality check made Vir think of how women's lives in India are surveilled in the name of safety, and it makes her question, What can we do to dismantle this deeply patriarchal society and the system?[29]
Aishwarya Bhuta gave a book review ofFearless Freedom in the Society and Culture in South Asia journal. Bhuta talks about how this book is written with a backdrop of the2012 Delhi Gang rape case which makes Krishnan reiterate her statement: "Death penalty is not a deterrent to rape," and how women's fearless freedom should be protected at all costs. This review by Aishwarya Bhuta talks a little bit about how the style of how this book was written; says the writing style is simple, and it consists of personal experiences, excerpts from autobiographies, instances from Cinema and poetry[30]
She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2014.[31]
| International | |
|---|---|
| People | |
