Women power and feminine solidarity

In my first serious foray into oral history, I focused on the women survivors of an industrial disaster that took the world by storm. On the night of 3 December 1984, as 40 tons of Methyl Iso Cyanate (MIC) leaked from inside the premises of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), the Indian Subsidiary of the American-owned Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the streets of Old Bhopal, capital of Madhya Pradesh in India, turned into a gas chamber. Anyone in the path of the gas was killed or maimed for life. More than three decades later, the site of this human-made environmental disaster continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous “toxic hotspots.” ¹ Thousands of women, who suffered from gas-related illnesses like lung cancer and liver disease, and children, suffering from various birth defects as a result of genetic mutations in their parents’ reproductive systems, are among the 550,000 people ravaged by the disaster’s fallout.