By
Disha Mullick
17 December
2020
Six months
after she died, and in the week of her birthday (she would have turned 29),
I’ve been trying to not dig out emails from Rizwana. Unsuccessfully.
Rizwana Tabassum. Photo: Khabar Lahariya
-----
There are
few weeks over the last six months that I have not thought about her: she plays
foil to the intense combination of resilience and despair that 2020 has been.
Her death has been a constant reminder of how important this work is, of
amplifying voices on the ground, of enabling women to speak truth to power,
wherever and whoever they are. And also a reminder of how fragile are all our
individual and collective efforts to shift the terms of our lives, our worlds.
This week,
I can’t extricate the memory of her extreme enthusiasm about her birthday, from
the somewhat tedious content that we always see around human rights day, and
the end of the 16 Days campaign on violence against women. The death of a
friend and colleague, a single Muslim woman, from a town in Uttar Pradesh, puts
the abstraction of human rights and violence against women in stark
perspective. What is the impact of all we do, and at the end, what are the ways
to measure ‘human rights’? Away from international and national agendas of
progress, away from the patriarchal state and its aggressive missions of Shakti.
Shakti in whose hands, and for which ends?
I’ve been
thinking of how Rizwana would have editorialised or reported on laws against
‘love jihad’ in UP, on the police storming into inter-religious weddings and
breaking them up, and on mission Shakti. She who was the model daughter, the
enthusiastic advocate of free and passionate love affairs. I’ve been thinking
of how the complexity of her personality, and her growth as a journalist could
be a record, a thick portrait of a woman finding and making human rights her
own.
So I did
trawl through emails and letters and drafts of stories she had written.
So many
editorial and personal arguments. So many Shayris. Minutes of meetings
recording her stellar performance in perfectly correct language. (You know how
no one writes minutes in perfect language.)
She went
from reporter to DTP operator, assistant editor, to social media producer, to
video producer. In all, she was sharp, ambitious, with an eye on the glittering
prize.
One
December, after being pulled up for lacking creativity, and any interest in
audience engagement, in her work as a social media producer, she sent an email
in all the colours of the rainbow, about a new crowd-puller show she wanted to
produce
मायानगरी का गरम मसाला
It had a
content break up of all the recent Bollywood releases and related gossip. And
at the end, the credits:
प्रोड्यूसर
रिज़वाना तबस्सुम
स्क्रिप्ट
रिज़वाना तबस्सुम
शो प्रजेंटेटर
रिज़वाना तबस्सुम
एडिटर
??????
She was not
convinced that this was content she wanted to produce, and it showed, packed
with clichés as it was, but if it had to be produced, she would do it and own
it too. That was Rizwana.
If feminism
is a vague and slippery thing, only learnt in the painful, exhilarating
practice of it, often dismissed as urban and elite, Rizwana is one of the
people in my life who taught me some things about it.
She was
outspoken, was Rizwana. And she also had an acute sense of hierarchy and power.
Who held it, how it shifted, and whose good books to be in. She held the
balance of resisting and remaining true to structures of power quite uniquely.
With humour and childishness, which never quite masked the intelligence that
lurked backstage. It meant that she was good at getting her way. Tickets for
the IPL from a colleague’s brother; a meeting and personal note from John
Abraham; a dress of white Banarasi Organza from Abbu’s loom that would
give Victorian puffs and ruffles a run for their money.
Her
relationship with her Abbu, her father, was one illustration of her
understanding of power. They were close, and he was intensely supportive of her
education, her career. In her heart, I think she always knew her father would
be on her side; yet each milestone of boundary pushing – going to college,
attending a residential training, travelling for a workshop, relocating for work
– was carefully and respectfully put to him to consider, to reject. Mediators
were brought in, so the point of confrontation was not the disobedient, defiant
daughter (this was a role she rejected outright), but the buffer in between,
who reasoned, vindicated Rizwana’s right to step outside the golden boundary.
And he always said, yes, just take care of her.
When he had
a stroke a few years after she moved away from home, I got to know a taut,
ash-faced Rizwana I had never seen before: her independence and ambition in a
new tussle with her sense of responsibility for Abbu; her need to take care of
the parent, physically and financially, familiar, older than her years,
definitely older than the playful, impetuous Rizwana we had always known.
I was her
local guardian for many years. My initial discomfort with being accountable for
a firebrand was assuaged by Rizwana’s very astute understanding of the dynamics
of the austere hostel where she stayed. If she flouted hostel rules by talking
on the phone beyond 9 pm, by reading all night, she also ensured that she won
over the sisters who were her wardens with her humour and, in the end, respect
of the rules that enabled her freedom to live away from home.
In the
office, her disciplined fasting and Namaz rubbed up against our discussions on
keeping the office space secular and free of any norms that confined or
oppressed women. Rizwana argued with us, she argued – quietly – with her Abbu
and Ammi who insisted that daily fasting wasn’t a good idea for someone who was
living and working independently; her health was quite fragile after a bad bout
of jaundice. She grew thinner, and stayed steadfast: she drew the lines around
which of her rights and values were open for discussion.
(L-R): Rizwana, with her KL colleagues at a Holi party in the Delhi
newsroom. Photo: Khabar Lahariya
------
I think it
was her close reading of power which made her a good journalist, even though it
took me years to see this, and with many arguments about her lack of interest
in ‘field work’. There are reporters and there are reporters. Rizwana was a
smart one, she knew which stories had scope to scale, to travel, to have
impact. If as a rookie, we had to pull her kicking and screaming out of home
and into the villages surrounding her home town to report on infrastructure and
governance; over the last few years of her life, she developed the ability to
recognise the stories that would have impact, the field work that made her
reports distinct, and the sharp perspective that made publication after
publication enlist her as an important voice of her – our – times.
If much has
not changed or improved, in the way that Rizwana’s home state sees those
communities most marginalised, sees girls and women; in how it insists on the
feudal ways of life that scoff at modern or politically correct rights of
liberty and equality – women like Rizwana show us that the meaning of human
rights, and the rights of women, is a very tangible, material quest. In life,
and death.
Happy
birthday, Rizwana. Wherever you are.
------
Disha
Mullick is the co-founder of Khabar Lahariya and CEO, Chambal Media.
Original
Headline: Rizwana Tabassum and the Quest for Human Rights
Source: The Wire
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/women-rizwana-tabassum-show-that/d/123784
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism