Dr. Fatima Burnad, founder and Executive Director of SRED, spent the Covid lockdowns writing a draft of her memoirs.
The 180-page autobiography, originally written in Tamil, is now in its final stages of editing and translating (into English), and scheduled to be launched in the end of 2022. How she managed to squeeze in her inspiring life journey and rich history of activism in a couple hundred pages is already a feat in itself. She recently turned 70 on March 19.
Early years
Born in Arakkonam, Vellore District in Tamil Nadu, India, a Dalit village, Fatima witnessed first-hand the lives and struggles of Dalit and tribal people. She was exposed at a very young age to the injustices against the Dalit people, especially women and girls. A Dalit girl, same age as her, who was working as a domestic helper was severely tortured and beaten by her employers. Eleven-year-old Fatima bravely went to the police to complain the atrocity. The girl was rescued but no charges were filed against her employers. Incensed, young Fatima started a protest petition, collected many signatures and went back to present it to the police.
It was the beginning of a life-long commitment to uphold and fight for human rights, especially Dalit and women’s rights. Fatima attributes her early inspiration and dedication to her father, Mr. M.P. Natesan, a school teacher and staunch advocate of public service and social justice. “I am proud of him and I follow his teachings. I still carry his name as a suffix.” She said that her father shunned Indian patriarchal norms in the way he treated her and her sisters. She has four sisters and three brothers.
Fatima studied at an elementary school in Perumuchi Village in Arakkonam and recalls having to walk five to six kilometers everyday to attend higher secondary school there too. “That was when I had the opportunity to volunteer in various extracurricular activities, with motivation from my teachers. After Standard 8th (8th Grade), I moved to Northwick’s girls’ higher secondary school in Chennai. In the hostel, they called me ‘Lady with the Lamp’ for taking care of students who were kept in the sick room. No one dared to go near the room because it was very dark and at the far end of the dormitory.”
In 1972, Fatima started working and living on her own in Agasampet Village near Pondicherry. She left her comfortable quarters at the convent and refused to accept the conditions of a Catholic sister at the Ravathakuppam Leprosy Hospital. She later joined the Action for Political and Cultural Change (later named Rural Community Development Association [RCDA]), an organization that worked within and around Chitamoor in Changlapet District.
In RCDA, Fatima had to face challenges and discrimination as the only woman working with five men at the time. “I was asked only to work on tailoring training that I refused. I fought to get equal positions, equal number of workers, equal budget, equal number of villages like them, even an equal share in the budget allocation. I was the first woman to go by cycle and who later drove a Bobby scooter, a two-wheeler vehicle. I had to fight to get a two-wheeler too.”
She recounts enjoying travelling to many far-flung villages in her scooter, doing social work and assisting villagers with their needs.”I would sometimes travel post-midnight. One time, I had to carry a child with burn injuries and his mother in the middle of the night on my scooter to bring them to the hospital. We had to wake up the doctors and pharmacists in that odd hour.”
Her work was noticed and recognized by like-minded friends who advised her to leave the men-led group and helped start her own organization. In 1979, the Society for Rural Education and Development (SRED) was born.
SRED
As founder and Executive Director of SRED, Fatima continued to develop her work among the Dalit and tribal communities in Tamil Nadu. In the last 43 years, under her leadership, SRED has been at the forefront of women and social movements in India against human rights abuses, government abuse and neglect, gender and caste discrimination and violence, socio-economic and political exclusion and neoliberal plunder and exploitation of agricultural lands and the environment by multinational companies.
She has successfully organized movements and mobilized Dalit women, rural workers and farmers, sex workers and Mathamma women (offered to gods to become prostituted and enslaved), young villagers and other tribal folk to stand up for their rights, seek redress from government institutions and call for much-needed policy reforms.
Fatima is a firm believer that issues of caste and gender, especially among Dalit women in rural India, are deeply rooted in societal class struggle.
“The integration of the Dalit women's movement and the landless labourers' struggles will become a broad people's movement to fight against oppression in society. We must continue to educate, train and organize women to fight against their own oppressions and the oppressions of others to achieve a new and just society where everyone, irrespective of sex, class or caste, is equal. Such programmes help women to come out of their villages, to meet other women and listen to their problems. Neither women's problems nor social problems can be solved as long as women remain isolated in their own homes.”
International leader
Over the years, Fatima has gained respect and prestige not only as a leading woman human rights defender in India but globally. She has worked extensively with and has gained accolades from international organizations and institutions abroad.
After completing her college education in India, she went on to acquire degrees at the University of Chicago and University of Sussex. She received an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Ecumenical Indian Theology. She was also awarded the Rashtriya Gaurav Award (National Honorary Award) by the International Friendship Fellowship in New Delhi, and the UNIFEM Germany Award for Asia. She was hailed “International Woman of the Year” by the International Biographical Center of Cambridge University in 1997-1998.
Fatima also presented the cause of Dalit women at the United Nations Durban Conference, the WTO Out of Agriculture Conference in Hong Kong in 2005, the RIO Plus 20 in Rome and the United Nations Women’s Conference in Beijing. She is also a founding member of the Asian Rural Women’s Conference, and hosted the first ever ARWC in Tamil Nadu in 2008.
Of present, Fatima is a Core Committee Member for Asia Dan Church Aid (DCA), Steering Committee Member of the People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty (PCFS), Steering Committee Member of the Pesticide Action Network-Asia Pacific (PAN AP), and Member of the Board of Directors of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) in Tokyo. She was also a former member of the Regional Council ofAsia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) and former State Committee Member of the National Alliance of Women- NAWO India.
Grassroots
Fatima is, first and foremost, a grassroots activist. She is happiest doing work with and living amongst the Dalit and tribal villagers. To this day, she continues to live in her parents’ house in her native Arakkonam with her dog, Puppy.
Now, at 70 years old, Fatima will still endure a long tiring journey under Tamil Nadu’s sweltering heat just to visit and talk to women villagers. The younger women, in their colorful sarees, sit by her feet and pay attention to every word she says. She listens intently to each one of them as they talk about landlessness, unemployment, discrimination, calamity and poverty. She encourages and motivates them to stand on their own feet, “be self-sufficient, be economically independent!”. Not long after, the women start to talk excitedly, driven and inspired to organize themselves into a community livelihood collective. On the ride back home, when asked if she is tired, she replies, “I am energized! I want another meeting! We need more women like them.”
Fatima has indeed come a long way from the lone scooter-riding activist of her younger days, but her enthusiasm and energy to serve the people still knows no bounds.
“Is 180 pages enough?”, Fatima asks somewhat innocently about her autobiography. The question is more than valid, if not apt. Her life’s journey and activism is still a continuing saga, after all.
“There is still much work to be done.” And carry on she will, for as long as injustice, discrimination and violence due to caste, class and gender persist.
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