Art Of Teaching

Feminism Is an attractive term which stresses to make humanity esteem the sacrifices that all the women in our society have been making for their household, parents and others.

Feminism in India stresses on giving respect to women and equality in the Indian society.

Feminism is a societal, reasonable, and political awareness that all genders and sexes should be treated equally. Feminism is about impartiality much more than it is about equality.

• Guaranteeing openings on basis of capacities and hard work.
• Giving chance to raise the voice of the unspoken.
• Culmination of the insensibility and exercise of difference.
• Authenticity of feminism lies in just conduct and esteem.

Madam Murmu was born in a Santhal Tribe in the village of Uparbeda in Kusumi Tehsil in Mayurbhanj district of the state of Odisha. Her father was the village head under the Panchayat Raj system.

It is an example of rare feminism that the person who motivated her to study was non other than her maternal grandmother. Madam Murmu started working after completing her graduation as she wanted to support her family financially.

She was thereafter married to Shyam Charan Murmu who was a bank officer. The couple had three children from this marriage, one girl and two boys. She left her job to look after the children. When her children grew up and could look after themselves, she again started working as a teacher. She also got involved in social work, and was supported by her husband.

Her personal life was full of tragedy, when she lost her 25-year-old son in 2009 in mysterious circumstances.  She lost her second son also in a road accident in 2013.  Her brother and mother also expired in the same month. She lost her husband also in 2014 in a cardiac arrest. These tragedies threw her in a bout of acute depression. To overcome the same, she took to meditation and yoga and also took the help of counselling. Her only daughter Itishri, works in UCO bank. She is married to rugby player Ganesh Hembram. The couple just celebrated the birth of their first child.

Thereafter her career grew manifold as she worked as Junior Assistant in the State Irrigation Department from 1979 to 1983.From 1984 she worked as a honorary teacher in Shri Aurobindo Integral Education and Research Institute in Rairangpur.

It was while she was here that she got offers from different social institutions for social work and she visited different villages of the area for promotion of educational, social and cultural development as a social activist.

She joined the political scenario as a BJP member in 1997 and was elected as a councillor of Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat. The very same year she was elected as the Vice Chairperson of Rairangpur NAC. She was a loving and soft-spoken personality and very popular and loved by the people for her honest social work.

She became the National Vice President of BJP’s Scheduled Tribe Morcha. She was elected as MLA on the BJP ticket twice in 2000 and 2009 from the constituency of Rairangpur. It is rare to see a tribal woman rise to fame through sheer hard work and in the year 2007 she was conferred Nilkantha Award for the Best MLA by Odisha Legislative Assembly.

 In the BJP alliance government in Odisha, she was the minister of state. From March 6, 2000, to August 6, 2002, she served as the Minister of State with Independent Charge for Commerce and Transport and from August 6, 2002, to May 16, 2004, she served as Minister of Fisheries and Animal Development.

 She served as the ninth Governor of Jharkhand from 2015 to 2021 and also the first person belonging to the scheduled tribe. She was also the first woman and tribal leader from Odisha to be selected for the post of Governor. 

Why she needs to be appreciated –

1. In 2016, she broadcasted that after her death, she would donate her eyes to the Kashyap Memorial Hospital in Ranchi.
2. She was very vigorous in social work in her area and encouraged women’s empowerment along with educational and social upliftment of tribal populations in India.
3.  She is an example of exemplary feminism as she quit the job to take care of her children. Later she joined the honorary post of teacher in an institution without any salary.
4. After the death of her two sons and husband, to contest the bout of  depression, she started following Brahmakumari Nirmala. On the occasion of Raksha Bandhan in 2018, Brahmakumari Nirmala tied Rakhi to Draupadi. A great symbolism of feminism where a lady ties rakee to another lady for security.
5. She has converted her in-laws house into a trust. She has donated this to a school. She has named the trust SLS after the name of her husband and sons. The trust is built in an area of 4 acres. She has built a memorial in the school for her husband and sons.
6. She has always been opinionated and frank about tribal rights and worked for their upliftment.
7. She revers her ancestry and has kept all her awards and recognitions in her ancestral house.

I salute this lady for her grit and resolve to rise above the rest in a masculine. male dominated and caste-based society and also in the most dilapidated conditions of a Santhal community. She has been trying to give back to the society and the tribal community, whatever power or recognition she gained from the society.

Don’t you think we females, also can do a lot for the society and give back to society through social commitments what society has given to us in the form of position and power and that of course would be the best form of feminism.

I end by saying that here are still a huge number of women who:

• do not get rudimentary education, sanitation, and healthcare facilities.
• are subject to different types of gender discrimination.
• are mistreated and abused domestically.
• are underprivileged and deprived of basic human rights and self-respect.

 Resolution of these matters and empowering these women actually suggest what feminism is and qualify what a feminist should do?

If I call myself a Feminist, I should then work for the betterment of such women who have to go through the circumstances described above rather than pondering on how to remove the three letters ‘man’ from ‘woman’?

Working for equal rights of women at large, education, hygiene, healthcare, self-esteem, fairness for women in order to establish equality in the society should be our cause and that to me is true feminism.

 Today the problem in Indian society is digression from the core resolve and getting touchy over matters which are totally unconnected to what the philosophy of feminism truly suggests and indicates.