Vacha was initiated by women active in the women’s movement in the 1980's. It was established and registered as a Trust in 1990.
It started as a resource centre to address need for safe space for discourse, resources and collective action.
04/04/2026
Manisha Ram is a youth leader from her basti - someone who’s quietly creating change through enthusiasm and kindness.
She was one of the 14 participants in our photography workshop, and this is her way of seeing and showing her world.
The words you see with each photo? Those are hers too. 🤍
Tell us what you felt while going through her photos. Your encouragement can go a long way in helping young girls explore photography, a space still largely dominated by men.
.i109 .madane.79
31/03/2026
When we are on the field in our bastis, we often see how difficult it is to prioritize nutrition and healthcare. As a result, people tend to seek care only when conditions have already worsened.
You think this is a concern only in bastis? Not quite.
Independent research by (Namrata Mishra - Vacha's Documentation, Communication and Capacity Building In charge) highlights how the intersection of caste, gender, and migration shapes women and girls’ access to healthcare across class.
Stay tuned, we’ll be sharing more from this research soon!
17/03/2026
Do you know about our Dr. Himanshu Shukla’s Adolescent Health Training and Research Centre?
Built on a shared vision of care, dignity, and justice, this space carries forward Sonalben's commitment towards creating a more equitable world for adolescent girls.
What was once Dr Himanshu Shukla's clinic in Koldongri is now a vibrant community centre led by a former Vacha participant, nurturing and empowering 44 young girls.
This centre is not just a place; it is a living legacy of trust, care, and the belief that every girl deserves the opportunity to thrive. 💜
04/03/2026
Stay connected with us for more updates on their journey. 💜
Photo credits for the image used in the second slide: (Photographer trained by Vacha, Vacha participant)
.madane.79 .i109
27/02/2026
Have you read our community newsletters yet?
.madane.79
21/02/2026
Many of you may have seen the video where a mother made her daughter carry bricks in her school bag and on her back and walk on the road.
When questioned, the mother said her school fee was ₹3,500 and asked if anyone would take responsibility for her child. What we witnessed was not just an act of harm, but layers of stress, helplessness, and intergenerational trauma unfolding in public.
Yes, the visible layer is a child being hurt. But there are invisible layers too; what happens at home, in schools, and in everyday systems that normalize burden on children.
The mother insisted, “Let her carry the bricks; she is very fond of carrying heavy bags,” and also made the child carry her handbag. This reflects how easily harmful norms become normal.
When confronted, the mother hit the child. This is not an isolated moment for many children; such experiences are everyday realities.
Our children deserve better. And it is on all of us to unlearn our pain and learn healthier ways of being.
As shared during our youth roundtable on natal violence, change begins when we question what is normalized and create ruptures in systems of insensitivity.
We also acknowledge the active bystanders who intervened and helped make the child safer. We need more of this. More care, more responsibility, more empathy.
Children should not carry our burdens - emotional or physical.
Video Credits:
18/02/2026
Remember the age when we were fascinated by pictures in our books? That stage is crucial; our minds are learning how the world works and what roles people are expected to play.
If children are exposed to gender-neutral norms through images at this age, they begin to see that care work and household responsibilities are not limited to women and girls.
What may appear to be a small shift in representation can create a significant impact over time.
We appreciate the efforts of the Government of Kerala in taking steps toward gender-inclusive educational content, and we hope more governments will adopt similar approaches through concrete action plans.
A more equal world is a better world for all of us.
Image credits:
05/02/2026
What does citizenship mean when equality doesn’t begin at home?
.madane.79
05/02/2026
Instead of asking:
• Why was she living alone?
• Why didn’t she respond differently?
We must ask:
Why do we raise boys who feel entitled to women’s time, bodies, and attention?
Why does independence reduce, rather than increase, a woman’s perceived right to safety?
30/01/2026
We are not encouraging age-old gender norms in 2026. Are you with us in the fight against gender-based restrictions? Like, share, support, donate! (Link to donate in bio)
.madane.79
28/01/2026
A pioneer in maternal and child health, Dr. Fernandez’s lifelong commitment to newborn care, nutrition, and women’s health has transformed countless lives, especially within urban communities.
At Vacha, we deeply value such feminist, community-rooted approaches that place women’s and children’s health at the center.
Her work reminds us that public health is deeply rooted in care, dignity, and justice. We celebrate her remarkable contribution and legacy. 🌱
20/01/2026
At Vacha, our bi-annual health camps are often the first point of healthcare access for many children and sometimes, for their parents too.
From knowing one’s blood group to understanding nutrition gaps, from overcoming fear to confronting deeply gendered realities, these camps tell stories that numbers alone cannot.
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Q: What is Vacha?
Sonal: Vacha is a women’s resource centre. It’s part of the women’s movement. It has grown out of (the) women’s movement. It started out as a library and cultural centre.
Q: Why is it important to have books or a library?
Sonal: (Laughs) Why do you think? Women like to read about women’s issues. We need information. Information is so important. Women were kept away from knowledge, definitely about themselves but also about other things. They did not have the right to read Vedas, they did not have the right to say the gayatri mantra. It’s about time we took knowledge, information and women’s issues seriously.
Q: You have all kinds of books here, right?
Sonal: Yes. You know what? With those old feminists, we would get a lot of books, acquire a lot of books and what happens usually – if someone borrows 5 rupees from you, that person will remember to return it but a book borrowed, it just goes. So, some of us just pooled in our books to create this library.
Q: You also have detective fiction and Shobhaa De and stuff?
Sonal: Yes we do. Why not? It’s women’s writing, it’s exciting (laughs). We are not here just for breast-beating, we are here for fun. We like detective fiction. Lots of women do and lots of women write detective fiction and they write good detective fiction, so we have it here. Otherwise why would people come? Only these careerist researchers will come and … there are people who love books and then some books read better than fiction. Take this book ‘Demon Lovers’, the woman is a poet but the book is on women and terrorism, and their relationship with terrorism, but it reads better than a novel, I would say. It’s a favourite book here.
Q: You have many members?
Sonal: Ya. Several. The college students come here only unfortunately to do their projects. It’s older women who come to read for pleasure. But I think it is also because they have more time, especially if they have jobs as college teachers or homemakers. Also today is the age of television, network, computers and so on, people read less. But they’ll get older don’t worry. That’s the best thing about age, everyone is going to get older (laughs).
Q: What were the goals of the Indian women’s movement?
Sonal: To change the world, nothing less, really. You’ll read the memoirs…Dalit ke saath mein, Shramik ke saath mein… The feminist movement was very active in supporting the textile strike and concerned about many things about democratic rights issues, environmental issues, ecological issues, peace of course… all kinds of things. What we got coverage for and what took up most of our time and energy was dowry and r**e and domestic violence… but we also created women’s studies, so there were a lot of things like that.
See, movement when you say, it’s a political thing. And in some sense it is also a vanguard kind of thing. A lot of initiatives, and no resources available and you become resourceful. People don’t understand one thing that you can’t be part of the women’s movement or an NGO about women without for instance, reading about women. I’m amazed you know, that people don’t read. They don’t want to see what has gone into the debates about gender about women’s issues in India. You do anything else – economics, law – you would have to read you know. Here, just because you are a woman and you were associated with some women’s work and have some feelings about things and so on, you feel you can make statements on that.
Q: How do you distinguish between poetry written by a woman and feminist poetry?
Sonal: There are three kinds, whether it is poetry or novels or any kind of literature and you should talk to a feminist critic about this but… And when you are doing something on the women’s movement you shouldn’t keep out women academics, women’s studies people, otherwise this film will be incomplete – that’s part of (the) women’s movement. There are women writers…or writers that happen to be women, then there are women who write in the feminine. They write as women. Their experience is important and they depict that. And the third is feminist writing, which is committed to a certain worldview and is committed to change. It still has to be literature. Which means it has to meet the norms of good literature, not norms laid down maybe… in a very constricted way, masculine norms…but it still has to have the validity as a work of art as a work of literature. So there are these 3 kinds.
Q: I found very few books on the history of the women’s movement. Why is there such a dearth?
Sonal: There is a dearth of books in general on Indian women. We women don’t have purchasing power so how will people publish it? Publishers also have a problem. So there is that.
Q: Also there is a dearth of visionary writing… I would read bells hooks and feel inspired but I didn’t find that…
Sonal: And yet the first feminist utopian novel is written in India. Directly in English by a Muslim woman of Bengali origin, called Sultana’s Dream. It’s a fantastic book. And that was written by Rukhaiya Sakhawat Hussian who lived and grew up in Dhaka, married young to a man in Bihar who encouraged her to learn English. He was an officer in the British Army, and then he died and she was a young widow and she moved to Calcutta. She has written usually in Bengali, but this book because she was learning English and she wanted to impress her husband, she wrote this book and put it where he would remove his hat and shoes. He saw that, read it right there and then and said … “What a revenge!” They had a very loving and affectionate relationship. This was published in 1905 in an English language women’s journal that was published from Madras. So until this came to light, people used to think that Charlotte Perkins Gillman, great writer, her book Her Land was the first feminist utopian novel that was published in 1915. But no, it was an Indian Bangladeshi woman who did this.
Q: So either that there are women writing in other languages that do this or that we don’t know about…
Sonal: Why? Because we don’t read other languages and there is no interest. Once there is sufficient interest, the translations start happening. What supports English should be made available to the vernacular so to say. It is now, that these translations are taking place from these rich languages…
PV: How did you get involved with the feminist movement and come to start Vacha?
Sonal: There was a shortage of space in Bombay and by our middle class standards we had an extra room. There was this woman… a friend of someone I knew and she didn’t have space to live. So I said ok, let her stay here. Today she is a lawyer, Gayatri Singh. She was working with working class people, and she had already been part of the women’s movement, so she and Vibhuti Patel and various other women used to meet here and they formed the first Socialist Women’s Group, and called a National Seminar for all those women who were interested. And I attended that workshop. And they formed a Feminist Network, which published the first journals in catalogue form in English and Hindi. Same time as Manushi came out in Delhi. That was published from here. Feminist Network was supported from here, from my house. So (I was) mainly a supporter, an outside supporter.And when I read feminist literature, sort of penny dropped you know. Many times when you read these things you say…this is what (it is)… but you never articulated it that way. It was very exciting as it always is. Never mind things people say about feminism, when a feminist comes and speaks, women respond to her.Then the Mathura r**e case thing happened. Right. So that’s when I realized you can be an outside supporter of tribal struggles and working class struggles or something but you can’t be a woman and be an outside supporter. So when this letter came about the Mathura r**e case judgment that four lawyers had sent, two women made 50 copies of it and sent it. I was one of the women who received it and 49 women finally turned up for that meeting.And immediately (the) Forum Against R**e was formed, which is now (the) Forum Against Oppression of Women. And I was already in my mid-30s. I could have lost the chance. Women in my generation… are very few in this movement. Then later on (the) Women’s Centre was formed here and other organizations worked from here.
This is how I became part of it. Having friends, having shared something, having some background, so it is always a combination, Paromita, it is never one thing.
Q: What was it do you think about you as a person? Because it could have been that it happened in your house and it didn’t have much of an impact on you?
Sonal: (Looks thoughtful, smiles) I think you always don’t do things for others, there is no altruism there… I was growing with it. I was finding fulfillment. Here were women and you could discuss lots of things with them, you know. Men are impressed (makes a sarcastic face) if you know today’s headlines from the newspaper, and I’m sure that they like your…intellectual inputs that you receive every morning from newspaper headlines (smiles). But the fact that you are a woman, doesn’t go out of their heads.
Whereas with other women, I have discussed things. More ideas followed. I come from a family where there are trained singers and professional singers …they couldn’t use my voice. But I had some sense of music, of something so I could create songs and we all could get together and do things.
Plus in my language, Gujrati there was hardly anything. So I began to write. So I think I became a writer and began publishing only when I was about 38, 39. For 20 years I wrote a feminist column in a newspaper which appeared on an editorial page and so on. I recovered old friends like Neena Haims and we did so much work together, for instance this video on forgotten women leaders from the Nationalist Movement, and a book about her aunt who was the first woman to top the list of matriculation in 1905 which we published…
I grew. How many women or men get opportunities to grow in their 40s or 50s? That was it. (laughs) Paromita,…the generation of happiness is a very important thing. It should be a happy experience, then only the creativity comes, you know?
Today, Vacha has once again had to move to a smaller space because of resistance from the authorities to allow organisations to use municipal school spaces. One of the things Sonal Shukla said to me, when she turned out to have an old poster I’d been searching for was: always keep friendship with old women, you never know what you might find.
Friendship with books is a friendship with older women in a way. Sometimes in it, I’ve found myself.
