Rajim Ketwas is a social worker with four decades of experience in issues of labour rights, caste-based violence, gender discrimination, and more. She is one of the earliest women members of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha founded by Shankar Guha Niyogi in Bhilai, Madhya Pradesh.
Rajim co-founded the Dalit Adivasi Manch in 2007 to work for dignified lives and rights of rural Dalit and Adivasi communities. The organisation focuses on issues of caste-based violence, forest rights, migrant labourers, human trafficking, violence against women, and gender.
In this conversation with IDR, Rajim talks about her journey as a woman activist in the labour movement during the 1990s, the state of labour rights in Chhattisgarh today, the origins of the Dalit Adivasi Manch, and why gender issues are at the forefront of her work.
Tell us about your early life and how you started working in the social sector.
My family traces its roots to Bargarh in Odisha. My parents were labourers, so our income wasn’t much. But the situation turned for the worse when my father passed away; my mother was pregnant with my youngest brother. My father’s family harassed my mother and took over the house. My maternal grandparents brought us to Pithora in Chhattisgarh, where we still live today.
Even after coming to Pithora, our circumstances didn’t change much. My mother continued to work as a labourer. She got us admitted to the hostel of a missionary school in Saraipali near Pithora. I couldn’t fit in there, so after grade 8 I returned home and started working with my mother.
When I was 17 and working with my mother, the nonprofit organisation Janjagriti invited me for a training in social work that they were conducting in a nearby town called Tilda. I didn’t know anything about this work, even though I had faced discrimination for being a Dalit. I didn’t know about the atrocities, Dalit issues, or the Constitution. My mother pawned brass utensils to arrange the money so I could attend the training.
The training had a practical aspect to it, so they sent me deep into the forests of Bastar and Dantewada for three months. There, an organisation called Parivartan saw me working and offered to support me in collectivising women.
The area was home to mostly Adivasi communities such as Gond, Bhatri, and Halwa. They spoke Gondi, Halbi, and other dialects. Since my language and appearance was different from theirs, it took me some time to earn their trust. I started wearing clothes similar to theirs, visited the forest with them to collect mahua and firewood, and learned their language. I would even take the local girls to watch films with me.
This did not feel like work to me. I would live, sleep, eat, and dance—I was a teenager after all. But this was also a time when there was large-scale deforestation, and the struggle for forest rights had begun. In Aasna village in Bastar, activists such as Mitki Bai and Kala Didi were hugging trees to prevent them from being cut. We saw their struggle first-hand but the understanding of what was going on, of our connection to the forest, took time to form within me.
I slowly started to realise what was going wrong in our society.
How did you become associated with the labour movement and trade union in Madhya Pradesh?
In 1989, while I was working with Parivartan, I met Shankar Guha Niyogi for the first time. He gave us posters and pamphlets that said the world is divided into two classes—workers and owners; one is exploited and the other is the exploiter. We would take these to the field and spread awareness about labour issues, informing people of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, which was a workers’ union. Seeing my work, Niyogi ji asked me to join the labour movement.
The morcha was born out of the idea that we need a movement for Chhattisgarh’s mukti (liberation), as it was then part of Madhya Pradesh. Niyogi ji had a dream that everyone should have food, work, and income, and there is no exploitation and corruption. For a new Chhattisgarh, there had to be a revolution that the people would win, bringing about liberation.
I was the only woman in the movement at the time. I would travel to factories on bicycles with male colleagues and talk to women workers about labour rights, highlighting how we work day and night for a meagre income while being labelled as unskilled labour; the disproportionate burden on women as we are asked to sweep, clean, and pick up the trash; the lack of value for our work; and the exploitation and harassment we suffer.
There were few people having these conversations with women workers; men were not comfortable speaking about this with them. I would cycle from one district to another, from Bhilai to Tedesara to everywhere I could, spreading awareness on these issues. Companies were exploiting workers severely; violence and intimidation were common. If they protested even a little, the company would bring workers from elsewhere. The condition was worse for women workers.
I learned to deal with abusive language and behaviour as encountering such situations had become common. I remember how once when I asked a contractor to pay wages to a worker who hadn’t been paid in months, he made an obscene comment about my character. “What respect do you have? You roam around with thousands of men,” he said. You had to be strong to be part of the trade union, ready to hit and to be hit.
Dealing with this made me see myself as a revolutionary. It seemed we had become experts in strikes, rallies, protests, and going to jail. Niyogi ji would say, “Tum jitna maar khaoge, utna faulad banoge. Jitna jail jaoge utna mazboot banoge; jail humare liye hi bana hai. Jail jaane se darna nahi hai.” (The more you get beaten up, the stronger you will become. The more you go to jail, the stronger you will become; jail is made for us. You must not be afraid of going to jail.) We never ran away from the police. I have been to jail 19 times, and I’ve been beaten up a lot.
After Niyogi ji’s murder in 1991, lakhs of workers gathered in Bhilai, which made the organisation and the movement much stronger. On July 1, 1992, we sat on railway tracks to protest against the exploitative policies of the companies and for our demands to be fulfilled. The state response to the peaceful protest was extremely aggressive, with 16 of our workers being shot dead. I was part of the protest and was beaten up brutally; I ended up bloodied and in a gutter, and perhaps survived because of this. The government had waged a campaign against workers—they were forcibly picked up from homes, their houses were demolished, and thousands of workers and movement leaders were imprisoned for nearly two years. The movement began to break up into different factions. Contrary to Niyogi ji’s dream of uniting the workers of the world, it was the industrialists who became united and destroyed the organisation.
I left the union not soon after. It wasn’t easy being one of the few women among mostly men. We weren’t given any salary for the work we were doing, but we needed money to fulfil workers’ basic needs such as medicines for sick children, ration, and milk. Rajendra Kumar, a member of the RCDRD organisation got to know about my work. Seeing the need to provide for the workers, he started paying me INR 500 on a monthly basis.
The reaction from the male workers to this was deeply hurtful to me. Even though I never kept the money for myself and only wanted to help the workers, one of them called me vetan bhogi (paid worker). They stopped letting me organise events because of this, despite all my hard work. It made me realise that even if you struggle equally, get beaten up, and go to jail, it is hard for men to accept women as leaders. They may accept a woman from an upper caste, because caste hierarchy plays a role. But it is much more difficult for an Adivasi or Dalit woman, no matter how educated or capable she is.
This incident made me leave the union and come back to Pithora.
How important do you consider the efforts of Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha and the labour movement, and where do you see them today?
Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha has fragmented into multiple parts. We raise slogans like ‘Duniya ke mazdoor ek ho’ (Workers of the world unite), but the morcha is divided into factions. There’s tension over territories, and no coordination. It is okay for organisations to have their own identity, but if we stood united on a platform, we could shake up any private player easily.
There are many factories in Chhattisgarh that have shut down after incurring losses. They don’t pay the workers for their labour. But new ones are still cropping up, instead of the old ones being reopened. So many villages and communities get displaced in the process of setting up a new factory. If trade unions and people’s organisations were united, they could strongly rise against this. Issues like rehabilitation and fair compensation for displaced people remain buried.
I also believe that nonprofits have played a major role in weakening people’s organisations and trade unions. Earlier, individuals would turn to people’s movements for their problems, and this built mutual relationships and trust. Now there is a nonprofit for every issue, so people go to them. What is important is that communities become aware of their own issues. Unless they feel that the land, resources, and forests they have conserved for generations along with their rights are being taken away, they will not fight, no matter how many trainings and workshops you conduct.
It’s also important to have representation of workers in politics. When one of our own becomes an MP, MLA, village sarpanch, they become our voice that raises the issues relevant for our communities. I had myself stood in the 2003 MLA elections.
How was your organisation, Dalit Adivasi Manch, started? Tell us about this journey.
When I left the union and returned to Pithora, I found that bonded labour was a major issue here—more than 5,000 bonded labourers were rehabilitated at the time. I wasn’t part of any organisation then and was working independently on issues, but I had always wanted to work with a sangathan. This was around 1997. With bonded labourers, our thought was jo zameen Sarkari hai woh zameen humari hai (government land is our land). We painted the horns of oxen red and cultivated 28,000 acres of land. Thus began the land satyagraha across Saraipali, Basna, and Pithora—areas of Chhattisgarh where we would say, “Give us land or put us in jail.”
During those years, a few other sangathans asked me to join their movement. But I believed we needed our own identity. Since I am a Dalit, we founded the Dalit Adivasi Manch in 2007. When Medha Patkar held a protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi against the SEZ policy, 100 of our members joined the struggle and stayed there for a month so that those who were part of the manch could observe and learn.
While my focus had been bonded labourers, soon we understood that all issues are interconnected. When someone is forced into bonded labour, the family suffers—women are left behind, and children’s education as well as the family’s social security are affected. Over time, our scope expanded, as did the issues. We started working on domestic violence, freeing bonded labourers, engaging with village councils to ensure access to government schemes, self-employment, forest rights, human trafficking, and more.
We focused on increasing women’s participation in the sangathan, because it was usually men who were more visible in the events. We told the men that if women can handle the entire responsibility of the house, they can participate equally in social work too.
When women and men started coming together in the sangathan, we’d discuss issues such as domestic violence, gender discrimination, and division of labour. Change begins at home, so we try to bring change within the families. I give small examples. When a man donates blood in our village, we feed him nutritious food because he needs it. Women bleed every month, but who thinks of them? Who thinks of their nutrition?
We discuss the gendered burden of work on women, and try to counter the idea that ‘women oppress other women’ by explaining that this is a product of patriarchy. We talk about how women don’t own land with their in-laws or their parents. We emphasise that if women go to the forest and collect forest produce, then rights should belong to them equally.
Building trust with the community is crucial for any people’s organisation. How do you do this?
Domestic violence cases are quite common in our area and are often not taken seriously. Women hesitate in confiding with family members. I encourage women to have at least one trusted friend with whom they can share anything. They often need a couple of days to think through how they want to handle the situation. It’s not easy for everyone to get a case lodged, so we act according to their wishes.
Whether the issue is violence, land, or anything else, we try to be with people when they seek help. This is how relationships and trust are built. My phone number and those of other organisation members are shared widely in villages, so people can call immediately in case of a problem. They know that Rajim didi and others from the sangathan will definitely come.
What message would you like to give to young women leaders in the social sector?
I believe that sharing the experiences of older women with the younger generation can produce strong leaders in our villages. Preparing a second line of leadership is crucial. They need to know how to talk to commissioners, police officers, tehsildars, and other officials. People still fear going to police stations or talking to authorities. This fear will only be eliminated when they understand that the police station and officials have a responsibility towards them. They are supposed to protect our human rights, not violate them. We need leaders who are aware, know their rights, and want to fight for them.
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Know more
- Watch this interview with Rajim Ketwas to learn more about her work.
- Read this interview with Madhu Mansuri Hasmukh about his contribution to the Jharkhand movement.
- Read more about the origins of Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha.
