Dr. Nivedita Prasad - Portrait of a Feminist of Color: "I Wanted to Be on the Other Side"

For her, this nuanced understanding is not merely an academic vocabulary but part of a life lived through a feminist lens. It is part of the women’s movements that have made Berlin this melting pot of cultures, ethnicities, religions, and gender orientations—movements that fought to become open and visible. Nivedita Prasad knew May Ayim —who played an important role since the late 1980s in helping Black Germans enter the public sphere and build their own communities—and worked alongside her. “Black History Month” became a symbol of this. The first discussions about “whiteness”—what does that actually mean: a culture of white dominance—took place: Convergences emerged between Jewish and feminist circles, between German-German women and women whose life stories are shaped by migration—in the first, second, and now even third and fourth generations.

Schokofabrik, Werkstatt der Kulturen der Welt, Black History Month, Orlanda Verlag—these have become venues for debates on questions such as: What does exclusion look like? What does being excluded from society actually look like? And how do we create our own spaces? Before the institutionalization and theorization of these questions in gender studies, Cultural Studies, and other disciplines, it was these “spaces” where discussions took place and ultimately led to now-established initiatives such as Christopher Street Day, shelters for girls and women, Ban Ying, counseling centers for victims of human trafficking, and others.

The concrete reality of discrimination and the tangible establishment of one’s own visibility were issues that deeply moved Nivedita Prasad personally—long before she knew she wanted to make them her profession. She moved from Siemensstadt to Neukölln before making Schöneberg her home. These moves marked distinct stages, positions, and actions through which she helped herself and others move forward—navigating social work, aid and self-help, the issues of human and women’s trafficking, abuse and violence against girls with immigrant backgrounds, as well as voluntary and forced prostitution; a path that would ultimately lead her from Berlin to Geneva, Brussels, and Bangkok.

Nivedita Prasad was born in 1967 in Chennai, India, into a Singh family. She grew up as an only child in this affluent North Indian family, living behind gated communities. Her grandfather was a large landowner and ran a factory. Both her father and mother were college graduates. English and Hindi were spoken at home. As a child, Nivedita was struck twice by serious illnesses during her first five years of life, which confined her to bed for nearly two years. In 1969–70, the family—in which, at her grandfather’s insistence, high educational standards were always expected of the daughters and grandchildren—moved to Delhi. While her father, inspired by the student movements in Europe, began a new relationship there, her mother and Nivedita remained in a rural setting. At the age of five, Nivedita began life at a boarding school—a place with a British-style educational philosophy.
Her grandfather and mother pushed for the dissolution of the marriage. Nivedita’s mother was one of the first three women in India to successfully obtain a divorce from her husband.

While her biological father moved on with his family and now lives in the U.S. as a corporate executive, her mother, following her remarriage, settled in Europe—specifically in Germany. The owner of a medium-sized business in Berlin-Kreuzberg became Nivedita’s stepfather. Her mother left India, while her grandfather became the most important caregiver for Nivedita, who was attending boarding school. In 1976, her half-brother Amit was born. Nivedita’s sister came to Germany; although she was enrolled in school, she was sent back after only half a year. It was not until four years later, on February 11, 1981, that the now 13-year-old finally arrived for good. Within half a year, she acquired an exceptional command of German. It was recommended that she attend a secondary school. The youngest in her class was on track to earn her high school diploma when, at the age of 16, her family attempted to deport her back to India. A one-way plane ticket was booked for her under the pretext of a family celebration. This was preceded by severe domestic discord and psychological abuse. With the support of a classmate, the still-minor girl managed to leave her family. The immigration authorities tolerate her stay—despite her lack of a passport—at least until she graduates from high school. Her parents had returned the document to the Indian Embassy. As a person “registered under immigration law,” Nivedita Prasad moves into a girls’ shelter with the support of the youth welfare office. There, she is the only young woman with an immigrant background and also the only one who will graduate from high school.

She is assigned a guardian to provide legal guidance and, every four months when her residence permit expires, she faces yet another existential crisis.
Later in her professional life, she will repeatedly work with undocumented people, advocate for the right to rights, and co-author a guide on how women who wish to immigrate might be able to do so. A guide that, as an official statement, will not be tolerated by the authorities. Today, she watches with concern the plight of African women in particular who want to leave their countries. “They arrive not only destitute but also injured and humiliated—if they haven’t died along the way. The women go anyway. No one will stop them,” says Nivedita Prasad. “And if that’s the case, why can’t we create opportunities to ensure they face fewer dangers along the way? They should have the option to borrow money through a trust arrangement—to pay what needs to be paid—and then have the chance to repay it fairly.” "This would have to be done entirely legally to protect the women from forced exploitation," says Prasad. She knows that what she’s talking about is a dream.

Constantly threatened with the loss of her residency status—“it ends at age 18,” according to the Berlin Immigration Office—she graduates from high school, starts reading *Emma*, and wants to become a social worker. She wants to advocate for services for girls with immigrant backgrounds and begins working herself at a shelter for victims of abuse and sexual violence. “I wanted to be on the other side.” She is confronted with domestic violence, suicide, and mental health issues, and learns to provide counseling and empower others to help themselves. She also succeeds in recruiting private supporters for this cause. On the radio, she asks for contraceptives and monetary donations. “The box of condoms that arrives as a result will last at least a year,” she said. While the feminist movement had played a key role in ensuring the existence of such emergency shelters, her commitment is now reaching its limits. “What it means when youth welfare funds are tied to residence permits… Nobody really understands what that means.” Prasad begins to question the dominance of white German-German women in caregiving relationships. The experiences of violence endured by girls from immigrant families are attributed to otherness and cultural difference. Nivedita Prasad begins to write and intervene in these debates. She is one of the first to speak out against the ethnicization of acts of violence and to bring up the issue of racism within the women’s movement. “Why,” I ask myself, “why shouldn’t there be a Turkish teapot in the girls’ shelter? Couldn’t we make things a little cozier for the girls?” “It’s harmful to drink Turkish tea; it poisons the body…—that was the answer.” She refuses to accept this everyday racism either. Later, she will wonder why the German women’s movement often struck her as somewhat dogmatic and, on top of that, unsexy. But that’s another discussion altogether. In 1987, Nivedita Prasad was admitted to the Free University of Berlin to study education as her major. With her legal residency status remaining uncertain, she initially supported herself through temporary jobs. She also volunteered at an AIDS support organization. In 1993, she passed her final exam with honors, submitting a thesis on “Feminist Social Work with Migrant Women,” and began taking on teaching assignments at the Technical University of Berlin. With the birth of her daughter Divya in 1996, she had to give up her shift work and weekend shifts at the girls’ shelter. In 1997, she became a project coordinator and research associate at Ban Ying, a counseling and coordination center against human trafficking in Berlin. Once again, she focused on the issue of “sexual violence and migration.” “I was able to learn something new every day,” says Dr. Prasad. She began to see her work as human rights advocacy, developed lobbying efforts for the rights of domestic workers at the UN, and negotiated with representatives from the Federal Foreign Office, the police, the Berlin Senate Department of the Interior, and others. Her central focus becomes promoting human rights conventions as a system of protection in social work: against forced labor and human trafficking. Ban Ying becomes a champion of campaigns such as “www.verantwortlicherfreier.de.” Nivedita Prasad co-authors the shadow report on the Federal Republic of Germany’s compliance with human rights. She represents her NGO’s position in Brussels, Geneva, and later at global meetings. On several occasions, groundbreaking out-of-court settlements are reached between clients and powerful opponents from diplomatic missions regarding domestic slavery. At the same time, she develops police training programs on racism, discrimination, and human trafficking. “It’s very demanding work, important work—racism is laid bare. But we’re not just victims here; we’re also experts.” What she particularly appreciates about Fatih Akin’s films is his portrayal of the “ordinary.” “That the migrant here isn’t just an exotic figure or a pimp, but a human being, a lover, and whatever else.”

Ban Ying’s staff members expose themselves to violent and criminal environments while representing their clients. In several cases, more than 40,000 euros in withheld wages are at stake after years of exploitation. Ban Ying writes in a postcard campaign: “Berlin, the cosmopolitan city—where modern slavery is at home.”

Nivedita Prasad seeks to collaborate with the German Institute for Human Rights. Beginning in 1993, she begins teaching at the Technical University of Berlin, later at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences and in Maastricht; starting in 2003, she teaches in the “Social Work as a Human Rights Profession” program. Professors Birgit Rommelspacher, Christina Thürmer-Rohr, Silvia Staub-Bernasconi, and others became Prasad’s academic mentors, advisors, and colleagues. She is also a single mother, a networker, and a writer who takes a stand. She repeatedly speaks out against attributing violence against women and girls to ethnic, religious, or cultural factors, most recently alongside others in response to a study on forced marriage published by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth in November 2011. In Bangkok, she meets with experts from self-organized projects run by domestic workers, sex workers, and various other organizations (GAATW). “They are very respectful and make sure that those directly affected speak for themselves. It’s also important here that representatives from Western Europe aren’t overrepresented. This is about feminist projects worldwide.” Perhaps she was on the plane there when she reflected on her academic career. “I turned forty and realized that I wanted to earn a doctorate.” Dr. Prasad earned her doctorate in 2008 at the University of Oldenburg. In 2010, she took over as director of the degree program “Social Work as a Human Rights Profession” in Berlin, established by Prof. Staub-Bernasconi: a collaborative project between the Protestant, Catholic, and Alice Salomon Universities and a first-of-its-kind program in the German-speaking world.

Prasad’s uncompromising stance toward authority figures when it comes to the concerns of those affected may occasionally seem stubborn in other contexts. It was the feminist scene that welcomed the young girl and in which she “grew up.” It took some time for this movement to also address racism and exclusion. “But things have changed.” And by that, Nivedita Prasad also means the spaces that “diaspora” music is carving out for itself—Aziza A, Chiha, the Tunisian singer who sings in German, and others. Later, after her daughter was born, she became a German citizen. Would she have done anything other than social work? “Maybe an interior designer, a Bauhaus specialist,” she says. The midday light streaming into her apartment through the balcony windows falls on a framed photo on the wall. It shows a group of dancers in a choreography by Chandralekha, the grand dame of modern Indian dance.

Esther Dischereit: The author is a writer; winner of the 2009 Erich Fried Prize; latest publication: Before the High Holidays, There Was a Whisper and a Rustle in the House, AvivA, Berlin, 2009