Daughters of Fire: Speaking Pain, Seeking Justice, Sustaining Resistance

Daughter of Fire, the Indian court of Women on and Related Forms of Violence against Women was a milestone in three ongoing journeys. The first journey is that of Vimochana and other women’s groups who have been addressing the specific issue of unnatural deaths  of women in marriages, euphemistically called dowry deaths; a violence growing in epidemic proportions that has yet to receive the public and state attention it needs; a violence that the law has hopelessly failed to address. The second journey is that of the women’s movement in India which apart from a direct engagement with the law has begun moving towards initiatives like public hearings, nari adalats and mahila panchayats in an effort to root justice and redress in the everyday lives of women. The third journey is that of the courts of women, a global movement initiated and sustained by the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council and El Taller International. The Courts of Women based on its critique of the dominate knowledge paradigms and its unique feminist methodology that revolves around weaving together the personal, the political, the affective and the aesthetic is attempting ot open out diverse ways to justice. It does so even while evolving relevant concepts and categories to understand the move older forms of violence against women that are taking newer and more grotesque forms. This publication seeks to capture some of the insights from these three journeys that came together in the Court to interweave and intersect, even as they deepened their ongoing search to make violence against women, unthinkable.