Université du Québec à Montréal
Delegation

Following the Canadian Tour of Yan Christian Warinussy, winner of the John Humphrey Freedom Award in 2005, Micheline Lévesque, Asia regional officer at Rights & Democracy, presents the situation in West Papua , a Indonesian province.

In the days following the Kumbha Mela, most recently held in Nasik ( India ) in August and September 2003, newspapers carried accounts of a most perplexing situation then confronting the local authorities. Numbers of elderly women – all of them widows, moreover – who had made the pilgrimage from their rural communities, were deliberately left behind at this sacred site by their own families. How was one to explain this abandonment at places of such sacred significance? What forms of redress were available to these women so that they might recover respect and dignity in their community? In what ways do Hindu tradition and the role of women in Indian society fit with the prescriptions of human rights and international treaties in the situation then unfolding?

To uncover answers to these questions, three women students at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) used their recent travels through India to visit each of the four cities in which the Kumbha Mela is held on a rotating basis.

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