Our History

Abha Bhaiya

Founder, Jagori and Jagori Rural Charitable Trust

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I was born in Wardha, Maharashtra, into a family of freedom fighters. Our mother was unequivocal that we, three sisters, must become professionals, as it was commonly said in those days, “Educate to stand on your own feet.”
After completing my Master’s in Philosophy from Rajasthan University, I chose to work as a teacher at Lakshmi Ashram in Uttarakhand. This Gandhian space nurtured simplicity and self-sufficiency, deeply reaffirming the values I had imbibed at home.
Subsequently, I travelled to Germany to study social work. The late 1960s were a globally charged and euphoric period, marked by multiple transformative movements. There, I was drawn deeply into global feminist theory and practice. I returned to India firmly grounded as a feminist. On my return, I completed my Master’s in Social Work and embarked on my journey as a socialist feminist activist. Since then, I have never looked back. It has been a journey spanning more than five decades.
While working in rural Telangana on issues of landless labour and struggles for minimum wages, I began engaging seriously with research and documentary filmmaking. Along with friends, we founded Yugantar, a feminist film collective, to document working-class women’s struggles that had long remained invisible. Our films—Nipani Tobacco Workers, Domestic Workers’ Strike in Pune, Sudesha of the Chipko Movement, Something Like a War, and a film on domestic violence—stand today as vital archival documentaries, narrating women’s lives, their struggles, and their resilience.
My work carried me across rural India, where women confronted layered oppression—poverty, caste, minority status, and gender discrimination—within an overarching system of patriarchy. I came to understand that feminism must speak their
language. It must be firmly rooted in their lived realities.
In 1980, Saheli was formed as an autonomous women’s collective taking on issues of rape and dowry murders. We functioned entirely as volunteers, spending far more time on the streets than in offices. In 1984, seven of us co-founded Jagori in Delhi—a creative feminist training and resource centre—with a vision to take feminist thought and practice into rural spaces. We developed multimedia materials for women with little or no literacy, bringing feminism closer to their everyday lives. I coordinated Jagori for nearly 15 years. Over time, Jagori became widely recognised for evolving feminist training methodologies, feminist research practices, and documentation, gradually attaining national stature. Later, Sangat
emerged as a South Asian network for feminist learning, training, and campaign-building across the region.
In 2002, I moved to Himachal Pradesh to establish Jagori Grameen, a deeply community- engaged grassroots organisation. Beginning with 25 villages, it now works across more than 250 villages, strengthening communities through women’s courts, adolescent leadership programmes, organic farming initiatives, and sustained support to access rights and

entitlements. Parallel to this work, I also established a feminist retreat centre—a safe and healing space in the mountains.
In 2013, after the Delhi gang rape shook the nation’s conscience, we joined One Billion Rising (OBR), a global campaign to end violence against women and gender-expansive identities. As India’s National OBR Coordinator for the past 12 years, we have risen across the country and globally on multiple issues, spanning 25 to 30 states, with the participation of thousands. We have danced, we have risen, we have reclaimed public spaces, raised our voices, and organised risings against all forms of violence and injustice. It continuous to be a revolution of hope.
Because a woman’s life is like the earth—both are poisoned by violence and chemicals—and healing both remains our mission. Feminism is not only about women; it is about dismantling all systems of domination.​