Lisy Sunny has her right fist clenched most of the time, as though she may throw it up and shout a slogan anytime. “I have never been docile,” she says. “Fighting comes naturally to me.” Meet the feisty leader of Pembilai Orumai (women’s unity)—the first ever women-only trade union struggle that the country witnessed. But it would be belittling to say that the struggle was just for better wages. It was much more that; it was a struggle against all the mainstream political parties, against deep-rooted patriarchy, against fake trade unionism. It was a feminist struggle at its zenith.
It has been a year since Sunny and her female co-workers marched from the tea plantation of the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Limited (KDHP) to the Munnar town in Kerala last year, protesting the “anti-employee measures” of the plantation. It is for certain that, when she embarked on the march, Sunny, who has studied only till the eighth standard, did not know about the famous ‘Women’s March on Versailles’ of 1789 which culminated in the French Revolution. The parallels are stark as both marches made a spectacular impact and triggered change on a large scale.
The Pembilai Orumai struggle gave the women—mostly lower caste migrants from Tamil Nadu—their voice. It gave them the courage to look straight into eyes of any man. As Sunny says, “The women realised that heaven will not fall if they utter the name of their men”.
When it started, Pembilai Orumai had no feminist undertones and Sunny was an average tea-plucking woman who used to traverse the steep hills with 50 to 75 kilograms of tea leaves on her back. As a tea plucker of KDHP, she was happy leading a “normal woman’s life tending to her husband and two children”. She was also an active member of the CITU, the trade union of the CPI(M).
Sunny’s ordinary life took an extraordinary turn when the women pluckers of the tea plantation started agitating for 20 per cent festival bonus. She conveyed the seriousness of the matter to the trade union leaders and requested them to lend support to the women as their lives were quite miserable. To her shock, a senior leader lambasted the women and said “women are useless without men by their side”. He also said that the women’s struggle would not last more than two days and used derogatory terms to describe the women who were protesting. It was patriarchy showing all its colours.
“I felt he was humiliating women everywhere,” says Sunny. “The fact that it was coming from my leader’s mouth was too much for me and I protested.” Not used to retaliation by a woman, the trade union leader got infuriated and told Sunny categorically that if she wanted to play the rebel, then her place was outside the party. Sunny walked out in a huff and went straight to the striking women, though she barely knew any of them. And that was the beginning of Pembilai Orumai, which has bagged a spot in the history of women’s struggles in the country.
“I was determined to show the trade unions their place so I went and met each and every woman in the plantation and urged them to join the struggle,” she says. Her trade union experience was a big help and under her leadership, the female tea pluckers staged a historic nine-day agitation in Munnar, bringing the town to a standstill.
The women, who had belonged to different mainstream political parties, remained a single unit and claimed the stage entirely for and by themselves. The agitation attracted media attention, leading to the trade unions and political leaders trying to play the patron. Sunny and her female friends shooed them away, literally.
“Our group did not have any name or specific slogans,” says Sunny. “We shouted whatever came to our minds. But whatever we said came straight from our hearts.”
Their demand for 20 per cent bonus was finally accepted, taking Pembilai Orumai to new heights. But they were not ready to rest on their laurels. Their next fight was to ensure a decent pay hike to the tea plantation workers; that, too, was a success.
Then came the elections to the local bodies, and Pembilai Orumai decided to contest against the mainstream political parties. “We went and pleaded with all the women voters and tried to tell them the importance of women standing together,” says Sunny, remembering those knee-breaking campaign days. Though they had no means to fight the mainstream political parties, three of their candidates managed to win.
But after the victory, the situation changed drastically.
The CPI(M) and the Congress joined hands to woo these women and they ended up rejoining their previous parties. “I cried a lot that day,” says Sunny, about the act of betrayal. “Normally I don’t cry. But that day I was broken to pieces.”
Still, a few women stuck with her even as political parties launched a united attack against them. According to her, these developments forced her to rethink her approach towards political parties. “I was against all political parties initially,” she says, explaining her decision to join the Aam Aadmi Party earlier this year. “But I realised that it is important to have the backing of a political party if you need to survive.” She is now the face of the party in Munnar.
Social scientists look at Pembilai Orumai with interest. Acording to Ravi Raman, former Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, Sunny and her comrades have ensured their place in the history of struggles by the way they challenged patriarchal hierarchies.
“It was a historic event without precedence. They succeeded despite the setbacks they faced from political parties,” says Raman, who is currently a member of Kerala State Planning Board. “The lessons and non-lessons it offers to the rest of the world are far-reaching.”
During the struggle, Sunny was physically attacked several times. Once, her neighbour’s husband, who is from a mainstream political party, hit her on the head with a stick. Blood trickled down her face. Without making any hue and cry she went inside her home, took a sickle and hit the man below his knees. “I will hit back anyone who hits me,” she says. “I have no qualms.” And it is this fighting spirit that she has passed on to other women in the plantation.
“The greatest victory of Pembilai Orumai was not the bonus hike or the salary raise,” Sunny says proudly. “It is the empowerment every woman feels now. No man dares to hit a woman these days as he knows that women now have the courage to hit back.” And this has earned her a new set of enemies—the husbands of the female workers. They complain that their wives no longer obey them. “Once a group of men surrounded me and started complaining that I have ruined their family lives,” she says. “When I asked their wives, they told me that they now insist on getting a share of their husbands’ salaries, which would otherwise have gone straight to the coffers of liquor shops.”
In between listening to a plantation labourer, who had come to meet Sunny at the AAP office to complain about her drunkard husband, she says: “You may call this feminism. We call this empowerment.” One did not feel like reminding her that both may be the same.
