It has been three years of working with Gender at Work India under the Feminist Youth Leadership Programme (FYLP), a unique project funded by UN Women India. I was part of the first cohort (what we now fondly refer to as the ‘OG Cohort’).
What started as an initiative to foster collaboration between 30 feminist youth leaders functioning independently (or as we like to say, ‘in silos’) has now mushroomed into a larger movement of collective leadership, growth, and, if I dare say, healing.
In June 2025, we did a 3-day workshop to gather again and plan how to proceed after the first two phases. Our agenda was to develop a shared understanding of what responsibilities can be handed over to the next line of leaders. It was also a space to share learnings from our collective experience over the last three years of this phenomenal teamwork.
This essay is my attempt to share my reflections as an OG cohort member, now slowly stepping down to let the next cohort take over. As a trauma psychologist and mental health activist, straight from the beginning, my reflections on this transformative journey have focused on healing. The factors that support it and the obstacles that challenge it. Consistent with this perspective, my reflections from this year’s first workshop are about the same.
Context: the kind of energy I walked into the workshop with
The FYLP helped me start identifying as a young queer feminist leader. In 2022, I walked into this project as a psychologist trying to talk about trauma and make mental health care more accessible. But after the first year of engagement, I had evolved (as chronicled here).
My work expanded from urban interventions to rural outreach programmes to address the mental health impact of gender based violence. The nature and scope of my work was changing because I was changing.
FYLP was my first exposure to openly queer leaders taking up space unapologetically. This solidarity helped me accept myself as a pansexual non-binary individual. I started collaborating with local youth organisations working with the LGBTQ community.
As I kept accepting more aspects of my self-identity, I organically found communities that I belong in. Through this growing feeling of collective belonging, I gained more useful perspectives. I was listening better because I had a deeper understanding of my privilege and power gaps.
I was understanding disability better because my experiences (like this podcast) in FYLP gave me a vocabulary for my son’s challenges as a gifted, neurodivergent child. All of these transformations led to immense personal development and professional success.
But the most rewarding consequence of these transitions was that I developed a practice of deep introspection. I started making sense of the outside world through reflections on my inner world.
That was the energy I walked into this most recent workshop with. Being a feminist youth leader for me was no longer just about raising my voice. It became about building a value-based lifestyle that granted me a deeper sense of accountability for my choices and responsibilities.
Highlights: moments from the workshop that stayed with me
Looking back, four highlights stayed with me. Two of them were from the workshop activities, and the other two were from intimate conversations with two members of the new cohort.
On the first day, there was a session facilitated by Shahrukh Alam from the Centre for Law and Policy Research. It was titled, ‘What are we fighting against, what are we fighting to preserve’. The conversation was centred on how the law is applied and interpreted differently depending on who it is used to protect.
When it comes to civilian actions that challenge authority, the law tends to be used to incriminate and suppress what is labelled dissent. Whereas the same behaviour, when done by a representative of the system, such as the armed forces, police, or even the Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code, is defended as valid.
It made me reflect on the double standard that shows up sometimes in my life as a parent. For instance, if I use violence in public to control or influence my child’s behaviour, people might get uncomfortable, but they won’t challenge me. My authority as a parent trumps my child’s need for dignity. Whereas, if my child does the same to me, several people will speak up and tell him to treat me with more respect.
The reflection that stayed with me was, why do the systems around us not focus on equal dignity and respect. Why does a position of authority warrant more respect than someone lower than me in the power dynamic?
Another workshop highlight that stayed with me was from a panel discussion featuring Hasina Khan from Bebaak Collective, an informal association of autonomous grassroots activists. The topic was ‘Haashiye se haq tak’, which translates to ‘from the fringes to rights’. The discourse touched upon the internal biases that perpetuate discriminatory behaviour. The ‘us and them’ way of looking at the world.
I reflected that these biases are often formed because of some internal process of self-rejection or denial happening within. If I don’t accept something in myself, I will reject it in others.
For example, if I have trouble accepting my own queerness or need for gender expression, I will feel discomfort when I see someone else freely accepting that side in themselves. In order to suppress my own discomfort, I will tend to try and influence that behaviour in others.
The way I see it, most forces or groups of people that we (as feminists) see as ‘perpetrators’ are probably experiencing some kind of internal bias of this nature. Priyanka Gaekwad, a developmental professional from the new cohort, came up to me after this session to try and understand what I meant when I brought this point up.
I see it as two layers of processes happening when one indulges in violence and discrimination. On the surface, of course, there is the layer of the action of injustice. An attempt to control and ‘put someone in their place’.
However, I see a deeper layer of emotional processing occurring within the individual choosing that action. Not having the skills, tools, or support for the emotional awareness of their internal discomfort or healthy mechanisms to deal with that discomfort, the individual feels compelled to make themselves bigger than the person, who’s presence forces them to acknowledge something they don’t want to face inside them.
Perhaps the flow of thought is this: I feel small within. I don’t know how to handle that. Your presence reminds me of that feeling. I need to squash you to squash that feeling.
The point I tried to make was that even if there is someone higher on the power dynamic abusing this power, it’s usually because of some kind of fear. Fear of breaking an internal image. Therefore, if we truly want to manifest Generational Equality, it is my opinion that it cannot be done through a worldview that’s based on blame.
When we blame others, we give away our own power. I invited the people in the room to reflect on this human tendency as a new way of looking at others whom we may label as perpetrators. Because if we only see the outer process, the surface layer, we are making ourselves smaller as the victim of their perpetration.
Instead, I emphasise repeatedly that resources must be allocated to improving mental health in order to see true social reform. My brief experience in the development sector so far has made it clear to me that an ‘Us Vs Them’ perspective can never liberate us. The famous words of Bbell Hhooks come to mind,
‘Forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?’
Takeaways: what I’m walking away with
If you’re wondering what the fourth highlight was, I saved the best for last. I call it the best because it’s still in processing. At one of the meal breaks, Shubhangani asked me what’s new with my organisation, The Mental Health Movement Chandigarh (MHM).
I told her that after 6 years of setting it up from scratch, I had put operations on pause because I’m restructuring it. You see, I realised that I no longer feel satisfied only supporting individuals and groups to recover from traumatic life experiences. Rather, I want the world to have fewer instances of violence.
It no longer feels enough to just help a survivor of abuse to function again. I want the individual abusing another to stop as well. And there is no way I can do that if I fail to see the humanity in the individual I have frequently called a ‘perpetrator.’
So, currently, I am in the process of deep inner work on a daily basis to transform and heal my own internal biases. I need to stop giving away my power by seeing myself as a victim, and free myself of narratives that make me bigger or smaller than others.
I cannot continue leading MHM till I know again what kind of a leader I am. Before I can go about preaching this path to liberation, I need to practice it. I’ve seen myself as a survivor my whole life with a history of childhood sexual assault, domestic violence, chronic mental illnesses, and marital rape. But now, I am doing the work to see myself as more than that.
The path in front of me involves learning how to treat myself and others with equal dignity. ‘Others’ includes each of those people who may have trangressed against me. Trust me, I understand it’s easier said than done. Yet, in the words of bell hooks again,
‘True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.’
I have my work cut out for me because I will face a lot of resistance to this radical approach from people who don’t necessarily see things this way. However, it doesn’t matter whether I’m successful in creating change in others. What matters is that I challenge my own beliefs about another human being. In that lies my true evolution and empowerment.
After all, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.,
‘Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but that it it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.’
