(From left) Sohini Chakraborty, Fatima Shaik, Jane Thompson, Kavery Kaul and Rosemary Dzuvichu at the session. Picture by Sayantan Ghosh

Rosemary Dzuvichu, adviser to one of the country’s most powerful NGOs, the Naga Mother’s Association, considers herself extremely lucky that her father raised her like a boy and gave her the platform to fight dogmatic social prejudices against women.

Dzuvichu, who teaches English at Nagaland University, was among a group of extraordinary women who shared their views during a session at Max Mueller Bhavan last week.

“I’ve been lucky to have a father who brought me up like a boy in a society where women and their need for education is deeply neglected. The struggle for self-determination has been on for 70 years and I’m trying to be the voice for the voiceless,” she said at the third chapter of Our Voice Our Journey organised by the American Center along with Aspen Institute India.

Dzuvichu, as president of the Nagaland teachers’ association, had forced the state government to call in the CBI to investigate corruption in the education system.

“People in Nagaland have so little knowledge of customary laws and practices that if a woman does anything out of the ordinary it is considered taboo,” she said, highlighting her journey through a social fabric steeped in patriarchy.

Fatima Shaik, the African American Catholic woman with a Bengali-Muslim grandfather who is in town to trace her ancestral roots in the city, reminisced about her days of “growing up in segregation” as a “black”.

She read out an extract from her book Climbing Monkey Hill, a story about a Black girl coming of age in New Orleans in the 1960s. “I write a lot about the past. I saw society change but what people still don’t realise is that stereotypes about blacks exist and people don’t see their inner lives.”

Kavery Kaul, the Bengali documentary film-maker who is filming Fatima’s journey, recalled her days of growing up in the US amid Asian stereotyping such as “getting married off as child bride or ending up as maths whiz”, and crossing boundaries to establish herself as a woman director.

“When I went to college in Harvard, wearing bangles and kajal and a strong American accent, I had nothing to lose while creating my identity. Today my daughter lives in an America where bangles and kajal are chic. I don’t think we have miles to go before we sleep but miles to go before we wake up.”

Another power-packed voice was that of Sohini Chakraborty, founder director of Kolkata Sanved. She shared her journey from a “lower middle class family” with the strength of “bold thoughts and actions”.

“I was a rebel from a young age. Every woman needs to look inside her and find that thing which is unique to her. Only then can we create more voices.”

Session moderator Jane Thompson, wife of the US consul-general in Calcutta, signed off with a reassuring line: “Let’s dream and pray for the day when we say ‘It’s a girl’, it will call for great rejoicing!”