Dear comrades, friends and well-wishers,
We are happy to say that our newsletter project is gaining momentum. Here we are with our second number even as the month of August begins. We would like to thank all those who have appreciated our efforts to reach out in these adverse times and have encouraged us to go on. We cannot however underestimate the difficulties that face us; nor can we forget that we have much to learn at a very rapid pace.
I am not talking merely of the fact that many of our best activists are not used to the technical aspects of online communication and therefore remain outside this charmed circle, but also of the terrible hegemony of fear and unreason which BJP-RSS is spreading all over the country from moment to moment even while all protest remains locked down under the threat of the corona virus.
How can we break the charmed circle of online network and communicate to our activists on the ground the messages we upload here? We have heard of workers in their workplace engaging the only literate one among themselves to read out the newspaper to the rest for an hour every day. Cannot our more advanced comrades at the local level take the matter we are providing through the newsletter to women on the ground wherever possible in a language which all of them understand? Surely it can be done if we are convinced that this matter is important for our struggle! Of course to convince our comrades of this, those of us who are preparing the newsletter must also produce matter that is not only immediately relevant, but also interesting.
Let us look at our AIDWA newsletter as a joint enterprise by all of us where each can contribute in her own way whether by writing for us or by sending us matter from their experience at the grass-roots, or even by communicating our messages to an ever-wider circle including those who do not have the benefits of smartphones and internet. Only then can we turn this newsletter into a weapon in our battle for equality and democratic rights.
Malini Bhattacharya, President, All India Democratic Women’s Association
