Raksha Bandh, Sahyog Shuru

#RakshaBandh Campaign

(16th to 22nd August, 2021)

Introduction

The #RakshaBandh campaign is organised every year around the period when the festival Rakshabandhan is celebrated in India. Rakshabandhan is a festival that traditionally involves a sister tying a Rakhi for her brother and in turn, he vows to protect her. This reiterates the idea that brothers are meant to protect their sisters, and ties into ideas of masculinity that imply men are stronger, they are protectors, and undermines the idea that men and women are equal and capable of looking after themselves. The idea of protection also comes with the problematic notion of placing restrictions on women in order to protect them thereby violating their human right to freedom, mobility, and even dignity. While the celebration of the bond between siblings during Rakshabandhan in itself is beautiful, this campaign is an attempt to redefine the messaging behind it to create relationships based on trust, mutual respect, and collaboration.

About the Campaign

For years women have been told that they need the protection of the men in their families, be it their fathers, uncles, or brothers. A teenage girl going out to fetch groceries from the market is told to take her brother along, even if it is her 6-year-old younger brother. This notion of protection plays a crucial part in upholding the foundations of patriarchy. 

Through this campaign, the idea is to say No to protection, Yes to collaboration and commit to working on our own behaviour and attitude and uphold women’s rights instead of putting restrictions on them. The tagline is Raksha Bandh, Sahyog Shuru. 

Share your Pledge

Instead of protecting women and girls, we need to ensure that our families, schools, colleges, workplaces and all other public places, are safe spaces. We have a role to play in creating these spaces and do away with restrictions put on women and girls under the guise of protection. Share a pledge to support this campaign and tell us-

One thing you can do to ensure your family/educational institute/workplace is a safe space.

OR

One thing you would like your brother (or the men in your life) to do to support you instead of protecting you.

While sharing pledges, let us also reflect on our own behaviour and ensure that we are not a part of the problem. Am I being inclusive while making decisions at home? Do I instil confidence in others to approach me for help? What can I do to be more supportive? These are all questions we hope this campaign will encourage and continue to linger in our thoughts and conversations beyond the limit of the campaign itself.

How to Participate

  1. Have your participants (you, your friends, colleagues) take individual photographs holding a placard with their pledge followed by the tag line: Raksha Bandh, Sahyog Shuru. Short videos can also be made saying the same.
  2. Share these photos/videos on social media using #RakshaBandh and sharing messages related to the idea behind the campaign.
  3. Tag more organisations or individuals and invite them to join the campaign.
  4. Tag Equal Community Foundation so we can amplify your campaign on our social media platforms as well. Our social media handles are-

Facebook- @ECFIndia

Instagram- @ecfindia

Twitter- @ecfindia

LinkedIn- @Equal Community Foundation

Links for Reference

Equal Community Foundation has been anchoring a campaign on Raksha Bandhan for the last 4 years. Through this campaign we encourage ourselves as a society to think about how we can create safe spaces in our own homes, peer groups, workplaces and communities, as we celebrate Raksha Bandhan. Through all our campaigns we always try to create spaces where everyone can take small steps to create a world where no woman or girl needs protection. Our intent is never to offend any religious or diverse sentiments that we as a society carry but to start conversations on how we can reflect on our individual attitudes and behaviours, and work together to achieve gender-equity. And we have been doing that for over a decade, in a very small way.

Unfortunately, over the course of the campaign this year, we misinterpreted one of the videos on our Twitter campaign. We made a mistake. As soon as we realised our mistake we issued the following clarification on Twitter:

We understand that this social media post has attracted the attention of certain media outlets. We would like to reiterate the clarification issued on our Twitter platform through this open statement.

We want to unequivocally apologise for any feelings or sentiments we might have offended with our social media post. Our intentions were right, but our communication was poor.

From the time we began our work a decade back, Equal Community Foundation has always strived to work towards our mission to ‘Raise Every Boy in India to be Gender Equitable’. We believe that if we actively raise boys to identify, challenge and change patriarchal gender norms, we can advance the cause of gender-equality. We work with adolescent boys with the consent of their parents. We believe that through conversations around patriarchal gender norms and equality we can collectively put an end to gender-based violence and discrimination.