Srilatha Batliwala - Granny Sri | S6 E07
At 69, Srilatha Batliwala is a feminist grandmother to her four grandchildren and also sees “grandmothering” as a metaphor for how she operates in the world of feminist and social justice movements.
Building on decades of activism and prolific writing as a feminist scholar – from her work with tens of thousands of women in village and slum communities in India to holding prestigious positions and fellowships at foundations, universities and transnational women’s rights organizations – Sri is dedicated to mentoring younger feminists and movement builders. Her brilliance at weaving complex strands of thought together into her seminal writing on power, movements, patriarchy and leadership continue to shape feminist perspectives, politics and practice in India and across the world.
We are so excited about her recent work on feminist mentoring and the feminist parables she is writing to share and honor the wisdom she gathered from countless women’s village collectives (and, as a bonus to TOB listeners, we will be posting Sri reading one of the parables with this episode). Sri advises and consults with CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action), an international organization working at the intersection of gender, sexuality and human rights, and Gender at Work, a global network of gender experts supporting organizations to build cultures of equality and inclusion. She also recently became an Honorary Professor of Practice at SOAS, University of London.
Welcome to the world of Granny Sri (her Instagram handle) who reminds us that her joy of being “a feminist mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, wife” and her pride at having raised a feminist son (and daughter) are amongst her most formidable achievements.
+ TRANSCRIPT
Idelisse & Joanne: Welcome to Two Old Bitches, I’m Idelisse Malavé
And I’m Joanne Sandler, and we are two old bitches!
We are interviewing our women friends, and women who could be our friends. Listen as they share stories about how they reinvent themselves!
Srilatha Batliwala: One of the very wise women in one of the collectives once said to me. When I asked her what is our role in your journey of change and she said, Well. First, you have to walk in front of us. Because you have to show us all these new pathways that we've never explored. Then you have to walk beside us. You know, be with us as we walk into those new paths and then you have to walk behind us, and I said, but why? Why do we have to walk behind you? She said, because if I stumble and fall, who's going to pick me up?
Joanne Sandler: Idelisse, how do we even begin to describe Srilatha Batliwala, who we are talking to in this episode,
Idelisse Malavé: she is such an amazing, multifaceted, leading, you know, activist, thinker, grandmother. It's really hard. But I think the reason we struggle is because I think it's true more for you even than it is for me. We have such a strong sense of the impact that she's had on the world and on feminist movement.
Joanne Sandler: That's true. And of course, Sri is going to tell us in the episode how she doesn't like
Idelisse Malavé: to be deified
Joanne Sandler: deified. And we're not deifying you Sri. But it is true that she is such a deep thinker and she takes the time to write and theorize and frame and reframe. And so, so many of the ideas that many of us have around feminist movement building, around the exercise of power of the patriarchy. Exactly. You know, she has brought them to life in the most beautiful way. That's the other thing. She's such a storyteller.
Idelisse Malavé: She's a storyteller, and she has such an aura and communicates generosity and she doesn't self-aggrandize now. Right. So we may be deifying her, But she is someone who I think from us it comes it is an acknowledgement of the impact she's had on the world and how we and many, many, many, many others in the world see her and with an enormous amount of gratitude.
Joanne Sandler: That's beautiful. That's right. With a lot of gratitude. Of course, this interview or this conversation that we had with her was also eye opening, even for those of us who know her, because she also has a very strong presence as a mother, a grandmother. Interesting the link between this discussion with Sri and the interview we had with Elena Landsburg, Lewis grandmothers, seasoned grandmothers on the move. It's interesting. Sri’s work history. Her resume is huge. Way too long to go into each detail. Suffice to say that she has worked in every possible context, right. From grassroots organizing in the most marginalized communities to Harvard, to the Ford Foundation, to being the chair of. And she's--
Idelisse Malavé: And she’s working with CRIA now, isn’t she?
Joanne Sandler: She’s doing work with CRIA. I think in knowledge generation, she works with gender at work where I'm also an associate. So Sri’s tentacles reach very widely
Idelisse Malavé: she is a beautiful writer, a beautiful writer of all sorts of workbooks on leadership for for organizers and feminist and beautiful essays and scholarly essays as well. But her real passion, it seems these days are her feminist parables. And you- we will get to introduce those to you in this episode. And we're really looking forward to all of those things. The tree is how does Sri define herself?
Srilatha Batliwala: Who am I? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I am. A multifaceted person for a long, long time, I identified as a woman, I guess I still do basically in the sense that I would say call me She/her, etc.. Right. But now I identify more as a person. And I think in some way, my most fundamental identity is as a feminist. So if you ask me who I am, I think I would start by saying I'm a feminist who is a feminist mother, a feminist grandmother, a feminist daughter, a feminist sister, a feminist wife. So in all my personal relationships, I am very much relating to my nearest and closest people as a feminist trying to uphold those values and that politics as far as I can. And in my personal relationships, I'm not always successful. But hey, I try. And because of that, I'm very proud of having raised a feminist son and I am very actively a feminist grandmother to all of my grandchildren. In the world at large, I think I think of myself now mainly as a feminist Scholar activist, someone who built on a couple of decades of very Hands-On grassroots activism and feminist activism and movement building and took that experience, married to my lifelong love of theory and concepts and analyzing, I think I was born asking the question, but why? You know, I was never very interested in what or in describing things, I was always interested in trying to understand them. And to, you know, going deeper and deeper. And interestingly, I had a feminist grandmother. Who was, I guess, what we today call an indigenous feminist, someone who was just rebellious and resistant in her genes, she had no access to theory or formal ideology, but she raised me till I was six and encouraged me to ask why, in an era in my culture where girls were not supposed to ask that question.
Idelisse Malavé: No.
Joanne Sandler: So, you know, Idelisse. talking to Sri at this time is is so interesting because as women who are growing older and-
Idelisse Malavé: I'm old already
Joanne Sandler: That's true. Mee too. I tell people that all the time. People try not to insult me, but I'm old. But- and one of the things about being an older woman that you hear women talking about is their sense of invisibility, their sense of- or their disconnection from power. And Sri has done so much work on the question of power, on examining power.
How do you see the way that they exercise their power the way you can and how that feeds into your thinking and theorizing about that, about feminists, about women and older women and power.
Srilatha Batliwala: You know, I think the most critical and deep way that it shaped my understanding of power was recognizing this site of power, which is within oneself. That- that there is this thing called power within, and that belief that each of us has that power within us to create change to not only for ourselves, but together with others. And then when I went to social work school and then started working in poor communities with very marginalized women and seeing everywhere those incredible women like my grandmother, and there's no explanation for it. You know, they are in deep poverty. They are in dead-end forms of work, a lot of unpaid labor costs, which they do not just in the home and in caregiving and so on, but also a lot of unpaid family labor and production.
And despite those circumstances. When we went there and started talking to them about all the sort of injustices they faced and, you know, in the early days of feminist popular education and we were all very inspired by theory and so on; they were ready! They were just looking for a space for a year that would listen and they were ready! and they charged forward because of this inner power. That's the way it influenced me, that sense of there is this power within us and that maybe in the early days of thinking about empowerment and of using the feminist popular education approach, the idea was that you activate that, which is already there. It's not like you have to give something! It's like lighting that fire!
Joanne Sandler: So much of your work, I mean, the question about when Ide asked you, who are you Sri? Of course, I always in my head answer for the person based on what I know they- who I know they are. And to me, you know, you are the feminist thinker that I always turn to.
Srilatha Batliwala: I guess I don't think of myself as a feminist thinker. I know that that's how many people see me now. And I actually I'm provoked by what you said, Joanne. Of course, I'm very sort of gratified and honored by what you said, but I’m also provoked to ask why don't I think of myself as a feminist thinker? But I start by saying I'm a feminist person and I started by talking about my relationships and so on and the very sort of personal sphere, but. And then moved on to the activism and that those roles. And I actually would like to talk about that a little bit, if it's OK. I think it's because I have all my life been very wary of being elevated, and put on any kind of a pedestal, I know that was not your intention, but I think you're also I would like to explore the role of the cultural context in which I grew up.. Where It was such a deeply embedded thing in our collective psyche to deify people. You know, to raise them up into these heroic figures and for the people so raised to become very seduced by that Imagery of themselves. And then really abuse that power
Joanne Sandler: and believe it
Srilatha Batliwala: so it actually goes back to power.
Joanne Sandler: It does.
Srilatha Batliwala: And I think I made a commitment within myself very early on because, you know, when you start doing any kind of community organizing and when you create these kinds of spaces for women, that they've never had access to those spaces in which, as I couldn't say in the () and movements, but what I see when I speak is to think dangerous thoughts and plan dangerous deeds, It is absolutely intoxicating for them that space. And so the people who make that possible become heroines and this hero-worship starts. Let me give you a small example: When I was working in that women's empowerment program, the government sponsored Women's Empowerment Program, which I ran for many years in Karnataka state, I was head of the program in Karnataka state and about three years in when I was at big gathering in one of the villages where we work, but it was a cross district gathering. So, about a thousand women had come from the different collectives across the state that we had- had to form. And a group of them came to me and very innocently asked for a photograph of me, and I don't know why my antenna went up, and it's a process way before we had cell phones and selfies and all that stuff, right. You had to actually have a photograph taken by a camera and have it printed out. I said we have spoken to so and so's nephew who is a photographer and bringing this camera. Can we take a photograph of you, we want to photograph? Well, I could have reacted very simply and said, yeah, of course, why not? I don't know why my antenna went up. And I said, Why? Why do you want to photograph of me? And they said, no, all the women want to put a photograph of you in our collective meetings centers... and I was just horrified. And I said, why, why do you want to put a photograph of me in your meeting center in your collective? Because without you none of this would have been possible. So they wanted to deify me, and I said no, I will not allow you to take a photograph of me individually to put in a meeting center. I said it very, you know, lovingly and kindly. But I will agree to have a photograph taken with all of you from that collective.
Joanne Sandler: And you come from the land of gurus.
Srilatha Batliwala: Exactly! So I had always seen that as a betrayal of your own politics around power, allowing people to elevate you, put you on a pedestal, you know, hero worship, you would consider you as a guru. A lot of young feminists who I encounter now, they say, oh, you're a guru. We've read all your work. And I have a very simple practice. When they do that, I receive it with appreciation, because I know it's given with great sincerity and generosity and love. And I don't want to disrespect that. But I take that and I offer it to my guru. And I say, OK, this is you acting through me, so this tribute also comes back to you. I don't let it sit here.
Joanne Sandler: So how do you see that interplay between the theorizing and the asking why and the wisdom that you grow or acquire or see or articulate as the years go by. You like being called wise?
Srilatha Batliwala: I think I think of it like the double helix. You know, it's these two strands that are constantly intertwined of examining yourself, seeing yourself as a site of power, as a user of power, as an abuser of power and your journey of learning and growing and coming to grips with a lot of those dilemmas and challenges coming to grips with your ego and not letting it sort of run the show. And that growth combined with what you're doing in the world, doing with others, learning from others, gaining from their courage, their action, their wisdom. And that's the double helix that I think is very important to actually achieving wisdom, right. Because they say wisdom is when- Is what results from combining experience and knowledge, converting experience into knowledge IS wisdom. And it is the wisdom then to share that knowledge, it is also wisdom to share that knowledge with others and to be open to receiving the knowledge that others have built from their experience.
My father was a scientist, he was a professor. But he was also a scientist committed to social justice, so I grew up in an environment where theory and concepts, both social theories, you know, political theories. He gave me the Communist Manifesto for my 15th birthday.
Joanne Sandler: My, you must have been so happy.
Srilatha Batliwala: Oh, I was so pissed. And for my 16th birthday, he gave me France Fallon's wretched of the Earth.
Joanne Sandler: So I'm afraid to ask what happened when you turned 17.
Srilatha Batliwala: I think I warned him I didn't want any more of those books.
So I think I always in fact, when you said who are you in many meetings, I usually introduce myself as a lifelong Schizophrenic, I used to say, now I believe it's called bipolar. Where I could never decide whether I want to be an activist or I wanted to be an academic, and so when I was an activist, I was always bugging everybody I worked with to think more theoretically, to read, to conceptualize, to analyze, etc.. And then realizing so much of the theory is bullshit because it hasn't been informed by activists. And so I said, no, no, I gotta get out there and start building new theories that's rooted in action and and what action has the wisdom that we've gained from activism. So in a sense, I've always wanted to straddle those both- those two worlds. And I think I've been very lucky that in the last 20 years I was able to do it. I was able to begin to actually straddle those worlds. But also what I deeply, deeply love is teaching.
Idelisse Malavé: With age, Sri doesn't have to worry anymore about: is she an activist or is she a theorist or thinker, she has a new identity that suits her not only with her family, but beyond.
Srilatha Batliwala: What may be surprising is - and I think Joanne has heard me say this before - is that the insight I got about who I got to be now actually came from becoming a grandmother. And I realized that through the experience of becoming a grandmother and being a very engaged grandmother that how your role shifts, because now you're not the primary caregiver, but you have a deep fundamental responsibility to support those who give the care. That's the role of grandmothers historically, and I don't care if people say, oh, this is such a heteronormative metaphor, so be it. But the fact is, whoever you are, whatever gender identity you embrace, whatever sexual expression to embrace, we've all had grandmothers and grandmothers have been a hugely important force in the survival of the human race.
We are among the only species that have grandparents, I don't know if you're aware of this. Most upper primates don't live long enough to see their grand progeny. So I began to see this as a metaphor for how I need to operate. In my world of feminist social change as well, now I don't have to be the doer. I don't have to be the CEO and the director and the headmistress and the big boss, because, hey, it's time now for another generation to take over those roles. But it's very vital for you to support those who are playing those roles. To support them with what you've learned, with what you distilled from your experience. And not insist they have to do it your way, ha, see, that's a very important lesson you learn.
I can't give a better analogy than the one I learned from the same, the Village Women's Collective as one of the very wise women in one of the collectives once said to me when I asked her what is our role in your journey of change and she said: Well. First, you have to walk in front of us, because you have to show us all these new pathways that we've never explored. Then you have to walk beside us. You know, be with us as we walk into those new paths and then you have to walk behind us, and I said, but why? Why do we have to walk behind you? She said, because if I stumble and fall, who's going to pick me up? So that's who I see myself as, now is to be a grandmother to the movement builders, to the feminists who are. and I feel globally a much, much worse situation than anything we faced. We had so much freedom to mobilize, organize, to challenge the state, et cetera. That's disappearing everywhere; that space. And they are, I think, also teaching us a great deal about new ways of organizing, which we didn't have to explore, we didn't have the technology, but also we didn't need those options, like having to mobilize and a much more hidden forms and guerrilla forms. And in some ways, I feel now we have to go back and relearn the wisdom from, for instance, a Latina feminist sisters, how did they survive those decades of hunters and you know dictatorships and keep at least the discourse alive? Because that's all they could do during those years, was to keep the discourse alive, keep the thinking alive so that it lived to see another day when it could go back into the streets and into the favelas and the villages and the urban settlements and all the places where the movement building has to has to happen, you know.
Idelisse Malavé: Joanne, Sri is so insightful about the the challenges, the realities facing feminist movement right now, but also how older women, old women can support younger activists, younger leaders and the whole grandmother idea. And she's come up with another way that I totally adore that you actually told me about before I heard it from Sri I think, that she's worked on what she calls feminist parables.
Joanne Sandler: That's right. And they’re stories, right. And we said at the beginning, and it's true, Sri is an amazing storyteller and not just a storyteller, Sri carries history, she breathes life into history and makes it learnable, teachable, knowable in a really magical way.
And she it's so accessible. Right. And it so goes to a point that so many are making these ways that if you really want to change hearts and minds, you have to do it at this story, emotive level and we have a special treat. If you like hearing about the feminist parables, you will see that we have some bonus episodes in which Sri reads a couple of her feminist parables
Idelisse Malavé: and let's hear her talk about them right now.
Srilatha Batliwala: The idea of the feminist parables is definitely rooted in there that I feel keeping those stories alive is very important, but it's also because I saw the power of those stories when I taught young feminist activists that if I tell the story of () of walking in front, working at the side and walking at the back. They get the concept of how leadership positions have to change. They get the concept of leading from the back in a way that a hundred sentences of academic prose cannot possibly convey.
And the most exciting thing about the feminist parables project is that they may start with my 15 parables, but we want to open up that platform and invite others to contribute their parables. And I really feel right now at this political moment, this is a very important project. It's not some hokey story to know. It's a very powerful way of keeping alive the memory of change.
Joanne Sandler: So Idelisse, let's be honest, there are some questions we like to ask kind of over and over again
Idelisse Malavé: I love our questions! do you know I was looking at the other you know, we always start as we did in this one with who are you? Right. And there's a whole podcast series that someone is doing that’s called “who Am I?” And I just love this- this opportunity for people to self identify.
Joanne Sandler: And then another question that we like to ask is, if you could do things differently, what would you do?
Idelisse Malavé: Right. Looking back something, you know, when you're older, you look back.
Joanne Sandler: Exactly. And you think... and Sri, kind of reframed the question.
Srilatha Batliwala: I guess anyone who is, you know, reflective and introspective is definitely going to ask themselves, what would I have done differently? But can I be perfectly honest? I've actually rejected that question and that exercise. And the reason is this: that every time I say to myself, oh, my God, if I had known this then, you know, I would have abcd differently or I would have done this organizing work differently; What I would have responded to my child differently or whatever. And then I find myself thinking: But then I didn't know this then, did I? You know, and so I realized that, or at least not realized, but I think I began to feel that in a way, it's kind of a futile question, but I think what I might ask myself is that; “If I was starting something now, what would I do differently?” From now forward, and I already did that because four years ago, willy nilly, I ended up having to manage this huge South Asia young women leaders project in which I was only supposed to be an adviser, but then I ended up being primarily in charge of the implementation. And what I did was apply a key insight from all the learning of the last 40 years by building into that project a major feminist mentoring element because I realized that so many things that I did, so many decisions that I made, so many mistakes that I made, so many dilemmas and chops that I got caught up in, I perhaps could have handled so much better if I had had mentors to support me. And not just one, but a group of mentors. So right now, I'm like majorly into the power of feminist mentoring and maybe in a sense it's an extension of my feminist grandmothering analogy.
Idelisse Malavé: Mentoring matters, and certainly having three mentors as an emerging leader must be just wonderful. But you still wonder, don't you, Joanne, about why some women with very similar beginnings and family histories and educations, some women become these amazing leaders and others don't? You know what? What is that?
Joanne Sandler: What is that? Sri is going to reflect on that, right now
Srilatha Batliwala: You know, in some ways, there isn't a rational explanation for it. I think we simply don't have the capacity as yet to comprehend this, to understand this. As I told you, I've always asked why, and I've certainly asked that question why about my grandmother. With her, to some extent, I understand why, but we've a lot of women, there doesn't seem to be any explanation for why this- this fire, this spark inside some, no matter what the external circumstances are. So, interestingly, I sometimes feel that maybe the theory of karma is the only explanation. I mean, it's as rational an explanation as any other that they come bringing something from another lifetime, from another reality, another experience, and that that flame has not been extinguished when they are reborn.
Idelisse Malavé: Joanne, don't you wonder, I wonder anyway, who is Sri going to be in her next lifetime or is she going to get off the wheel? Isn't that what they say in Buddhism, right? you get off the wheel altogether? she's so enlightened.
Joanne Sandler: I know. Now that's a really provocative question to end with.
Idelisse Malavé: And the good thing is that Sri is- this lifetime of Sri is going to live on through her feminist parables.
Joanne Sandler: Very true. Very true. Which is a reminder to all of our listeners that we are going to be posting Sri reading, two of her feminist parables. We're going to do everything we can to get her to read more and try to make that a feature that- that you can dip into every once in a while. At some point, you'll have a book and we'll make sure to promote that on the Two Old Bitches site. And we just want to thank everybody for listening to this episode. We've been getting some really interesting emails lately.
Idelisse Malavé: and we would love to get more. We want to hear from you if you're listening.
Joanne Sandler: If you care about two old bitches emotional well-being, you'll send us an email. It's very easy on our site. Contact us. Send us an email. We'll be sure to read it. Maybe not respond immediately, but we'll try.
Idelisse Malavé: We will.
Joanne Sandler: Thank you for listening. See you soon.
Idelisse Malavé: Thank you.
