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When Shameem
Pathan fled a life of domestic abuse in Ahmedabad to make her way in the
world behind the steering wheel of a TATA truck, little did she know that
her life story would one day inspire millions of Indian women to stand
up for their basic human rights. Her story was beamed into millions of
Indian homes this year in a song Mann ke Manjeere produced by Mallika
Dutt. The video won the Screen Awards in Mumbai and was even nominated
for an MTV Music Award, much to the surprise of top music producers who
believed that only love songs could sell.
"I think the media tends to underplay the intelligence of the public,"
says Dutt, who is also president of Breakthrough, a non-profit media group.
In the face of extraordinary opposition and a limited budget, Dutt managed
to produce three music videos and an album that focused on the dreams
and aspirations of women. It stayed on the top 10 charts for three months
.
By choosing popular mass media to spread empowerment messages to women
and under-represented groups, Breakthrough plans to change the way we
look at the world around us. "The message put out by the Indian mainstream
media is that women are either sexual or physical objects or that they
are helpless victims of dowry or violence," says Dutt in an interview
in her apartment in Uptown Manhattan, "But it's important for people
to know that women too are entitled to basic human rights."
Dutt is no newcomer to fundamental rights issues and has spent almost
20 years sparking changes in the world around her. As a programme officer
of the Ford Foundation she helped fund non-profits groups all over the
nation and in her final year of law school she started the internationally
renowned group sakhi for South Asian Women which has worked on a range
of issues domestically and abroad. In the early days, she was often worried
about her safety. "We used to get hate mail when we went out to some
of these communities, and people always used to call us names and scream
at us." But now her version of in-your-face-activism has a wide range
of supporters from outspoken feminists to film producers. Even Amitabh
Bachchan wrote a letter of support. Now outspoken opposition has dwindled
to almost zero. Breakthrough's real challenge is to change the unspoken
values of society.
Although Breakthrough's message travels across international boundaries,
Dutt realises that "it is very important for us to work in the medium
of cultural traditions". The road to these goals is long, but through
mass media she believes it is possible. "Breakthrough is about changing
macro-level public consciousness, but at the end of the day it is about
asking every individual 'What are you doing to change the problems in
society?'"And Mann ke Manjeere is a giant step in that direction-juxtaposing
real life examples against those projected in films. For the first few
weeks after the video was aired, their website (www.letsbreakthrough.org)
got over 50,000 hits a day.
Future plans for Breakthrough include fight against caste discrimination
in India, creating a curriculum for schools and organising independent
workshops that focus on social change.
-Scott Carney
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CURRENT
ISSUE DEC 3, 2001
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