The day before the India Court of Women “Daughters of Fire” started, more than 300 women took part of the silent WiB vigil against violence on women. After a while I was photographing the participants and the banners they were caring, I suddenly saw many of the group in the traffic streets around handing out leaflets to inform why we were in the streets and to invite them to the Women’s Court. Never ever I saw handed out so many leaflets. Never ever I saw so many people effective starting reading the pamphlet after they got it. After the vigil not one pamphlet was thrown on the ground. I was very impressed. The rituals like letting go the balloons, lighting the candles and the gathering afterwards, sitting in the streets and sharing our experience and strength, the singing that started, it made it all a fantastic start of what would be a very extra-ordinary, very strong India Women’s Court. Below I will copy the leaflets that were taken out to the people that passed by the vigil in Bangalore.

Friends in the city of Bangalore:
You have watched us over the years standing in the streets of our city; sometimes on the steps of the Town Hall, at bus-stops, often times, around the statue of Gandhiji. We have stood from the day the Babri Masjid was torn down by hindu fundamentalists and continue to stand against all forms of violence and wars and all the wars against women.
Dressed in black – a color that we wear in anguish and protest, speaking a language of silence, reaching you through the banners we hold and the pamphlets we distribute, sharing our hopes for a city and a world without violence through the lamps that we light.
We were about twenty women when we began our vigil in 1993; today we are many more, and many, many more stand in the market squares and public places in their own cities against all wars against women, women in Palestine speaking of a lost homeland, grief stricken mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina searching for their disappeared children, the comfort women, the military sexual slaves of the Japanese army (in World War II) seeking a restorative justice; over three thousand of us stood from all over the world in Huairou, Beijing and continue to gather at events all around the world at the World Social Forums and its related spaces and in local places before we hold the Court of Women.
As we do today:
This special vigil is dedicated to the women who will bring testimony to the India Court of Women on Dowry and the Related Forms of Violence: DAUGHTERS OF FIRE. This is a public hearing that will be held on Tuesday, July 28 at the Christ University Auditorium, Hosur Road from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Please come: From our years of deep involvement with the issue of violence against women particularly with the phenomena of unnatural deaths of women called dowry murders, the unofficial estimates are 25000 a year all over India; three women are burnt in our own city everyday.
Please stand with us in solidarity as we dedicate this vigil to the millions of women who have not survived, to all the women – miracles who have survived so that one day the violence of dowry and all its related forms of violence will become unimaginable violence against women. THAT WOULD BE A WORLD TO LEAVE TO OUR CHILDREN.
Women in Black Bangalore, India
July 26, 2009