Photo Credit: Apne Aap Women Worldwide, Peace Walk Campaign in Delhi July 5th 2016
"I WOULD SAY THAT SHE NEEDS TO TRUST HERSELF - THAT IS THE FIRST THING - AND TO GO FOR WHAT SHE WANTS TO DO. BECAUSE AS LONG AS SHE BELIEVES IN HERSELF SHE'S FINE, BUT IF SHE STARTS SECOND-GUESSING HERSELF, IF SHE'S ALWAYS SEEKING APPROVAL FROM OTHERS, SHE'S NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO GET THE SELF-CONFIDENCE TO DO THINGS. THAT IS ONE THING I WOULD DEFINITELY TELL WOMEN - TO SET YOURSELF FREE FROM FEAR AND TO TRUST YOURSELF TO DO IT."
Ruchira Gupta is the recipient of the 2009 Clinton Global Citizen Award and an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She is an abolitionist who has dedicated her life to putting an end to sex trafficking. She believes in a world in which men and women no longer buy and sell each other, and is committed to seeing an end to the flesh trade in our lifetime.
I happened upon Ruchira at an event hosted by the non-profit organization Artists for Human Rights. She was the guest of honor that evening and gave a talk about her work with Apne Aap, a Non-Governmental Organization she founded to combat sex trafficking in India. Hearing the stories and statistics she had to share was heartbreaking; stories about young girls forced into the sex trade and the vicious cycle of entrapment that followed for the rest of their lives. Ruchira was fighting to free these girls and to help them free themselves.
I knew if anybody could tell me about how to move beyond fear it would be Ruchira, who often put her own life on the line to help these women. The harsh reality of her work put so much of my own life into perspective. I feel honored to have had the opportunity to speak with such an inspirational woman, a woman who is truly using her career to “be the change.” I hope her words of wisdom inspire you as well, and remind you of the strength and ability we all hold within to achieve whatever we set our minds to.
Ruchira Gupta is the recipient of the 2009 Clinton Global Citizen Award and an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She is an abolitionist who has dedicated her life to putting an end to sex trafficking. She believes in a world in which men and women no longer buy and sell each other, and is committed to seeing an end to the flesh trade in our lifetime.
I happened upon Ruchira at an event hosted by the non-profit organization Artists for Human Rights. She was the guest of honor that evening and gave a talk about her work with Apne Aap, a Non-Governmental Organization she founded to combat sex trafficking in India. Hearing the stories and statistics she had to share was heartbreaking; stories about young girls forced into the sex trade and the vicious cycle of entrapment that followed for the rest of their lives. Ruchira was fighting to free these girls and to help them free themselves.
I knew if anybody could tell me about how to move beyond fear it would be Ruchira, who often put her own life on the line to help these women. The harsh reality of her work put so much of my own life into perspective. I feel honored to have had the opportunity to speak with such an inspirational woman, a woman who is truly using her career to “be the change.” I hope her words of wisdom inspire you as well, and remind you of the strength and ability we all hold within to achieve whatever we set our minds to.
- Many people look at your work and achievements with great admiration, but don’t know how or where to begin creating something as meaningful in their own lives. Can you talk a bit about how you came to be where you are today? What advice can you share with other women about how to get started?
I was a journalist when I came across missing women in the villages of India. The discovery shocked me and made me curious. When I asked the men in the villages where the girls were, they said they were in Bombay. Bombay was 1400 kilometers away – at least two hours from the highway. I just didn’t understand. So I began to look for the answer, and that began to change my life. I found that the flesh trade existed in my time; my generation. Poor and starving families were seduced by traffickers, told that they would get their daughters a job in the big city, promises of marriage … they wouldn’t always use the term prostitution, but if they did they would explain that at least their daughter would have a bed, water and food to eat. And so a farmer would let their daughter go for fifty dollars, one hundred dollars.
Then these recruiters would hand [the girls] over to a set of transporters who would bring them across the border, and on the other side were the lodge keepers who would lock [them] up for two or three nights, beating them, drugging them, starving them, until their spirits were completely subjugated. Then they were handed over to another set of traffic hoarders who took them to brothels in places like Bombay and Calcutta. There, pimps would negotiate the price of these girls based on their beauty, meaning the younger the better, down to 7 years old. Fair skin was a premium, and voluptuous was also desired. And then these girls were handed over to the brothel managers who would lock the girls up in small rooms for the next five years, only letting them out to eat or take customers. And behind the brothel managers were the financial managers, landlords, organized criminal networks, and finally the men, these “Johns,” who wanted to buy the girls; between them all existed a whole flesh trade, and in my lifetime.
So as a good journalist, the first thing I wanted to do was tell the story. I contacted friends, the Canadian Broadcasting Company came forward, and together we introduced a documentary called The Selling of Innocents. I spent a lot of time in the brothels of Bombay talking to the women about their life while making the film. At one point, somebody pulled a knife on me saying, “We don’t want you to film here!” Then twenty or so of the women surrounded me, and they said, “No! If you want to kill her, you have to kill us first. Because we have decided to tell her our story so we can let the world know about what is going on, and by doing that we want to at least be able to save our daughters from the same fate that we have had.” The man thought it would be too much trouble to kill twenty-three women, so he backed away. I was able to finish the documentary and won an Emmy for outstanding investigative journalism.
But, I felt that I wanted to do more. What I had done with the film felt limited. So, I went back to Bombay and showed the film to the women in the brothel, and their reaction was to ask me to do more. When I explained that I didn’t know what more I could do, they said, “No, no, you have access to money and networks! You can bring that to the table.” I agreed that I could bring those things, but also told them of the need to bring their experience and knowledge of prostitution, their desire for change, and their struggle to that same table. And they said yes, of course. I reminded them of how they had formed a circle around me and saved me, and I said we must do this for each other. And so, based on that, we formed Apne Aap.
Apne Aap means self-empowered action in Hindi. Apne Aap started with those 22 women, who at that time had four dreams. It was very clear to them: they wanted a school for their children, they wanted a job in an office (which really meant they wanted something that was 9-5 where they had old age pension, and where nobody would shout at or beat or abuse them), they wanted a room of their own (meaning not a bed in a brothel or a bed in a shelter, but something of their own where nobody else could walk in when they wanted, and where they would not be kicked around), and the fourth thing they said they wanted was justice. To them justice meant two things, one was protection – because nobody was there to watch out for them. When they were 13 years old they were pulled out of the brothels and put into prostitution, and nobody came to their rescue. Even the police would sometimes extort free sex from them. And the other was punishment for the pimps, the Johns; all those involved.
So it was with these four ideas that Apne Aap was formed. The first thing we did was to find a room in the community to form a school. We hired a teacher, got the women to bring their daughters and sons, and started teaching the kids. When the children were ready for formal schooling, we wanted them to have the same opportunity as other kids and attend the local school in the village, but the principal at that time said no to all of that. So I told the women to go as a group, that there’s more power in numbers, and we sent a member of the Apne Aap staff with them. They pleaded and cried, and the principle relented. And today, those children are now in college or have jobs.
Apne Aap has further grown from that and now we are all over the country. We have helped more than 20,000 women and girls and their family members, and the journey continues. We have more than 800 kids in schools across the country, and the women have found a voice.
The Apne Apne network is 20,000 strong, and what this network has done is taught women how to campaign and how to fight for their rights. Our efforts have gone on to create the first anti-trafficking law in India. That’s how things have moved on and changed, and what our approach has done. And now, of course, I find that the challenge has become even greater, because the challenge is now to change the mindset; the patriarchal mindset that certain women should or even deserve to be abused. There’s a whole group of people who say prostitution is inevitable, and some even say “men will be men” when it comes to paying for sex. They want to mitigate the harms of prostitution without doing anything to end this kind of prostitution, which creates a false notion of ethical demand – as though it’s alright to buy a prostitute or to buy sex if you use a condom. Also, it sort of creates the term sex worker. We still have much to do.
- What would you recommend to women who want to get started in a similar career, one that involves addressing a world problem? That if they see an issue or a problem they should go after it?
It depends on the woman. What motivates her, what calls her to believe in herself at that moment? Because as long as she believes in herself she’s fine, but if she starts second guessing herself, if she’s always seeking approval from others, she’s never going to get that self-confidence to be able to do things. So, I would say she needs to trust herself – that is the first thing, and go for what she wants to do. That is one thing I would definitely tell women – to set yourself free from fear and to trust yourself to do it.
And sometimes she will find that healing others heals herself. This what I found for myself – I too was rescued when I went to rescue these women. I used to be very, very, shy as a journalist, I didn’t even want to ask a question at a press conference. But, I started to speak-up, because I wanted to voice what the women wanted, and today I do public speeches. I grew my own self-confidence by giving the women confidence. They also literally saved me when that man pulled a knife out on me. You know, we all rescue each other in this process.
So, you take a stand. And, I learned that with taking a stand, I gained courage and an education. Because I had to fight for my stand – I had to read, I had to meet people, I had to train myself – it gave me an education. Don’t get intimidated by degrees or anything like that, because often people’s experience is knowledge. What I learned from the women was much more than I ever learned through academics, and that is the knowledge that has led me to work out this formula for women, which is working for them today. And also to listen. If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them.
- It is clear that your chosen career is much more than just a job, it is also an extension of your personal beliefs. What can you tell other women about the importance of aligning your personal values with your career path and how to think of work in terms of being an extension of oneself?
The reason I became a journalist was because I had a very deep emotional belief that I must work on what was unfair in the world; I had a deep desire for justice and equality since I was a teenager. So, I decided on journalism as a means to do this because I was a good writer. Then, at some point while making The Selling of Innocents, I got so involved with the women that I realized journalism was just not enough because it didn’t allow me to resolve the issues. I wanted to take action. So, that’s why I gave up journalism.
I always believed in justice, that was very important to me – dignity, justice, equality. And, it was my belief that all those things had to start from the bottom to transform to the top, that if I wasn’t down there with the people that were affected by what I was talking about, then there was no point in talking about what I was doing. That was a very, very important belief, and I think it came from Gandhian principles … the idea that when you do something, you need to think about how it will affect the weakest person you know.
For me, that weakest person was the 13-year-old girl in the brothel. I began to call her the “last girl.” She was weaker than the poor man’s wife because she was a child and nobody respected her decisions. Just to be a good girl she had to obey, obey, obey. Nobody respected her dreams, her decisions, her body – nothing. And, in India, on top of that, she was also low caste … in America she could be Black or Native American, in Europe she could be the daughter of an undocumented worker … the correlation is that this is definitely somebody suffering from multiple oppressions and really at the bottom of the hierarchy – the last girl. And I thought, “Okay fine, if I have to do something, I will start with the last girl, because I see [that’s where the problem starts].”
As I began working, to my frustration I found that so many laws, so many policies, so many systems that were created supposedly for the bottom third, would very often just skim the top of the bottom; they would not reach the last girl. It was too difficult to reach her … they would go for the low-hanging fruit first … they would ignore her. So I realized that the first thing this girl needs help with is to find her voice, because her voice is the first thing stifled when she’s told what to wear, what to do, all of that. So, I started trying to get as close as possible to the last girl.
They used to ask Gandhi, “Why do you always travel by third class on the train?” And he’d say, “Because there is no first class.” He said it so simply, but that was part of his effort to get as close [as possible] to the last class. So that became a founding belief. Another is that I believed the means are inherent to the end. I saw prostitution as violence against women, and so I could not use something to fight it that involved violence. It had to be non-violent, which is how I came up with setting about to help the women raise their voices and organize.
Another important belief that I learned came from Gloria Steinem, who told me that you have to honor your sister with the truth. When I first met Gloria and I heard that I didn’t quite understand her meaning, but then I saw her speak to it with a group of women. She was telling them about an abortion she had long ago and I thought, “Oh; because she spoke her truth they connected to her much better.” I had been unsure about how this group of women would feel about Gloria because she was white, from America, and spoke a different language, but they connected with her because they found her authentic and they spoke to her truth. With this I realized how important it was to speak as authentically as you can to fellow women, to yourself, to the truth.
Even recently I spoke at the UN and mentioned I was speaking on behalf of prostitutes, I said that they don’t want prostitution to be seen as work, they want it to be recognized as exploitation. I explained that the UN should not use the term sex worker, rather they should use the term prostituted woman or child. I urged the UN to stand by these women, stand by their universal declarations of human rights, which is not just to protect the privileged, but also to create policies for the marginalized, the under privileged, and the hundreds of thousands who are prostituted and exploited because of an absence of choice. I said, “You need to stand by the last girl.” And they were quite furious about it, but I got a standing ovation from the audience.
I don’t know what the future holds, but the point is that it’s a journey. People keep telling me, “Who knows where you’ll reach eventually!” But, I say there’s no such thing as eventually because it’s about the here and now. You just go round and round – you organize, you speak, you write an article, you repeat.
- It seems the thing holding most women back from reaching their dreams is fear of failure. From your experience of working with women who are literally putting their lives on the line to move past fear, what can you tell others about how to overcome this in themselves? How can “playing it safe” actually be more dangerous than taking the initiative to move towards our dreams?
What I was taught was, okay what can be the worst-case scenario? And then I'd think, “Okay, if I can face that, then I can do it.” Or sometimes it comes down to outrage, sometimes it’s stubbornness, sometimes it’s tenacity … sometimes it’s also ego that helps to overcome the fear, just to prove to the world that I’m right, sometimes it’s a deep belief in one’s self. The three things I’ve taught myself – because you know it takes some practice over the years – is never to hold onto fear, shame, or guilt. That if you don’t hold onto those things, you can do a lot that you thought never could be done.
- Your emphasis on self-empowerment is central to both the meaning and objective of Apne Aap, placing it at the root of all progress and transformation. Can you explain what self-empowerment means to you and why it is so important for growth of any kind?
Yes, because the first thing we as women are taught in India when we are born is this conditioning to disempower ourselves. We are told not to like ourselves. And we are taught we have to obey, because someone else is better than us, and because of that we stop making decisions and we look for a father figure to feel safer because that’s what we’ve been conditioned. And he may make good or bad decisions, but because we are so disempowered, we think even his bad decision is better than our good decision.
So it is very important to empower ourselves because we know ourselves better than anyone else. This is our skin, our flesh, our blood. We are with ourselves every single moment, when nobody else is with us. We know what is best for ourselves, and we must begin to trust our own instincts. It’s also practical what I’m saying because the person that knows you best is yourself, because you’re with yourself all the time. The journey within is as important as the journey without.
- Along those lines, you’ve said that Apne Aap was “formed as a group of women to rescue each other through the change within and the change without.” I think this is a great reminder to women that external changes are never exclusively outside of us, that they are always affecting something within and we must address those changes as well. What advice do you have to fellow women about staying aligned both within and without through change?
It’s hard because you know it’s not possible to be the perfect person all the time, it’s a struggle to be aligned … you know sometimes you are, and sometimes you’re not! Sometimes I use meditation as a technique, sometimes I use hanging out with friends as a technique, sometimes art or an interesting book. It’s very difficult to find a balance sometimes – especially when witnessing so much inequality – but the thing is to try and come back to it and not to give up on it.
- When you started Apne Aap you were criticized for fighting what was deemed a “hopeless issue” and even called stupid for leaving a successful career in journalism. Needless to say, it’s a good thing you didn’t listen to your critics. What can you tell other women about not letting naysayers get you down, about believing in what you’re doing – even if it goes against all odds?
Don’t let others criticism distract you, because it can really bog you down. As women we are more affected by criticism. Men tend to just brush it aside, but we sort of mull over it and think about it and this and that … but you know it’s enough to just give 10% of our time to it. You have to trust yourself. You know the one thing that I realized also, is there’s no point in wasting your time waiting for approval from others. Because that is very distracting, and what happens then is that you try to become something you’re not. If you do what you want, there will be people that like it and people that don’t, and that’s fine – learn to be happy either way.
At some point you come to a time where even happiness is only part of life’s experience, and that is the hardest thing to explain to anybody. I think fulfillment is a better word. If you come to understand that in life you are going to have unhappiness and happiness – that it’s part of life – then you can begin to accept that some of it is beyond your control, that there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Being unhappy and lonely is part of it just as much as being happy and having friends is. It’s not like you should expect that it’s a fairy tale with a happy ending, and then the book is over. The book is never over; the story always continues. As long as there’s a story, that’s the fun part. So you see there’s a romance and curiosity in that.
- Through your efforts and progress in creating a worldwide movement against sex trafficking you have emphasized the importance of banding together with like-minded individuals for a cause. For other women who are looking to start a movement, what can you tell them about the importance of this kind of collective energy and aligning with those who have similar values?
I think it’s one of the most important things that can keep you going on the journey, because as I mentioned the journey can also be tough and lonely. What I found along the way was a family of choice, which for me was the feminist movement. Like a family, I know these other women are there for me. I can literally go into any city in the world and have a network I can connect with, even if I don’t know anyone.
Also, you never know who you are going to influence along the way. I was in Portland, Maine, where the Mayor gave me the keys to the city. There was a survivor of prostitution who introduced me at the public lecture I gave. She is white, American, and was trafficked at age 12 in Boston. And she said, “It’s thanks to you Ruchira, that survivors like me found a voice.” Because she read about what I was doing and was inspired, and she said courage is contagious. I thought, “What could be better than this moment, truly?” Being from my country, standing with a survivor in Portland, Maine who has been helped by something I’ve done. That to me was better than the Nobel Prize.
- I love how you place equal emphasis on grassroots activism and political engagement, thus strengthening your cause. What can you tell other women about the importance of working with government to create change? What advice and tips can you offer?
For women, especially if they’re marginalized, the political space is a place for them to challenge their inequality. It’s one of the most crucial tools to use because then you have laws, and the law is supposed to be there to protect you. So, you have to learn how to use the law. And what does politics mean ultimately? Politics means to organize, to change policy in your favor. So if you’re poor and marginalized, the best way to create change is to organize a group to create something that you want in your favor and to go for it. That’s why the Apne Aap method of organizing is so deeply political. Because they’re organizing around access to justice, access to lawmaking and social rights. It’s a political tool to change your ecosystem around you; that will also change what’s happening to you.
- As a role model to so many women, you have given hope and provided inspiration to those in need. What are your thoughts on the importance of role models to a woman’s personal development?
It helps a lot, because other women make you realize, “Yes, it can be done.” I remember reading Little Women, and just seeing what Joe was doing as a writer sparked my interest to be a journalist. I sometimes had role models who were fictitious, but I also had role models around me in terms of journalists, writers, and my parents. My parents were very Gandhian – very pure, very political – so I would listen to them. And then you know, Gloria Steinem of course, has been a huge role model to me. But also what you do is you pick up things from role models and you take what you can. People say things like, “Oh, Gloria is so gentle, I want you to be like her!” But, I'm not. I get angry, impatient, and sometimes I snap at people! But that doesn’t prevent me from seeing her as my role model in other ways. I have to be myself and not become a carbon copy of people I admire.
- With such a physically and emotionally demanding job, how do you stay centered? What advice do you have for other women about how to implement self-care on both an inner and outer level?
Meditation, taking walks, reading. You know how I balance it is very interesting, I try to get to the sensual flavor of life. So, for example, anything that is very beautiful, I’m very attracted to it … going to a very beautiful place or seeing a beautiful painting, beautiful classical music or a beautiful sunset; in India going up to the Himalayas. I try to get to that beautiful sensual flavor of life because I believe the five senses have to be engaged even in healing, because I believe in learning by doing – stories and dancing and acting. To be in harmony with the world you have to touch and feel the world.
HOW YOU CAN HELP: FOLLOW RUCHIRA AND APNE AAP ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, AND FACEBOOK TO SUPPORT AND GET INVOLVED.