Anima Mondal was in eighth grade when her parents announced they’d found a man to marry her. Growing up in a village in rural West Bengal, Anima knew this was the norm — her mother wed when she was only nine; her grandmother at six. But something inside Anima demanded that she say no. Anima’s father, a well-known community figure, worried for the reputation of his family.
“I had always seen men in my family enjoying their lives, while women were kept separate. They had no independence, no choices to make, no freedom to explore interests or hobbies. I was adamant: I didn’t want that life,” she says.
Her parents agreed to push off her wedding until 10th grade, but her parents had already promised a daughter to the man’s family. They forced Anima’s 13-year-old sister to marry him instead, and ostracized Anima from the family. Anima was devastated, and vowed to find a way out of this vicious cycle. When she joined a workshop led by Talash Society for Inner Strength, Peace and Equality — an AJWS grantee empowering youth in West Bengal to take control of their lives through mindfulness practices and leadership training — she saw the doorway she needed.
“From the moment I entered that space, I felt a power rising within me,” says Anima. “I realized I wasn’t suffering alone for the first time; 40 other girls sat with me. I thought of their suffering more than mine. I pictured us all free. And I vowed, if I can be helped, we all can. If I can fight for my life, we all can.”
Established in Kolkata, India, in 2008, Talash is addressing an often-unnoticed factor contributing to gender-based violence and early marriage: our own minds. With AJWS’s support, Talash founder and director Ayesha Sinha adapted Japanese martial arts, women’s self-defense practices, non-violent communication methods and mindfulness exercises into an intensive curriculum to empower youth in Kolkata to free themselves from the patriarchal power structures that dictate what they can be and achieve.
Ayesha’s curriculum was the first of its kind in Kolkata, reshaping the thought processes of young people to identify the external influences— like sexism and restrictive religious traditions — that they’d inherited, and disavow them. “We are attempting to create change in a way that had no blueprint, no map to follow. But AJWS trusted us to follow our hearts,” says Ayesha.
Today, Talash works directly with over 5,000 young people in local communities and 58 schools, pushing them to identify what they really want — not what society tells them.
Once Anima connected with Talash, she felt unstoppable; she rapidly dove into Talash’s array of personal safety and wellbeing workshops, built unshakeable self-confidence and began spreading the message across her village, coaching other young girls to fight against their looming marriages. By 15, Anima says, she was known in her village as the girl stopping child marriage. With this influence came notoriety. Men and boys harassed Anima mercilessly. But Anima had come too far to be intimidated.
She graduated from high school and college, joined the Talash team and began leading workshops to empower other girls. Recently, she began studying to earn a master’s in social work. And with her income, she helps support her sister’s family, as well.
“Through Talash, I found an identity for myself. It was my chance to make a difference for so many girls, and I jumped at it. I can speak up. Speak out. Stand up for my rights — and help other girls do the same,” she says. “I am the one literate person in my entire community — and I’m proud of what I’ve become. I’m a source of inspiration for the other girls in my community. They point at me and want to be like me. I’ve achieved my dreams, and I want to help other girls do the same.”
Once the pariah of her family, Anima is now the main decisionmaker.
“Taking these baby steps from family outcast to the center of my family has made me so confident. If I was thrown to America, I could find my way back myself,” says Anima. “I’m a girl who has created an identity for my father, not the opposite way around.”